Models of Professionalism: Post-WWI Strategies and Ideologies Towards a Canadian Professional Theatre by Grace Smith a Thesis Su

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Models of Professionalism:

Post-WWI Strategies and Ideologies Towards a Canadian Professional Theatre

Grace Smith

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies University of Toronto

Models of Professionalism:

Post-WWI Strategies and Ideologies Towards a Canadian Professional Theatre

Grace Smith

Doctor of Philosophy

Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

The prevailing historical narratives of twentieth-century Canadian theatre have generally pinpointed a few particular post-WWII theatre companies in Ontario as the first professional companies in the province, if not in the whole country. These narratives apply the label of professional as though its definition and implications were self-evident and not historically- contingent. This study unpacks the professional status of Ontario’s first post-WWII professional theatre companies by first examining the interwar theatre community, models, and discourse which preceded the post-war companies. Using Bourdieu’s field theory and studies of professions/professionalism, this study argues that a collection of professional signifiers best serves an analysis of these post-WWII Ontario companies and the source of their professional status. Through this foundational framework this study illuminates professionalization as a purposeful process that is not always beneficial and for which exclusion is necessary; the interwar Ontario theatre community is analysed in this study through its prioritization of certain iii aesthetic tastes, class and political ideologies, and culturally and historically-contingent standards of theatrical competence.

Through case studies and analysis of historical and rhetorical trends, this study will then examine the post-WWII professional companies in Ontario, including the New Play Society,

Jupiter Theatre, and Crest Theatre of Toronto, the Stratford Festival, and the Canadian Repertory

Theatre of Ottawa, and their use of theatrical models, professional signifiers, and rhetoric from the interwar theatre discourse to establish and reinforce their status as both Canadian and professional. It was necessary for these companies, as I will argue, to signify both their professionalism and Canadian-ness in order to distance themselves from older failed models of professional theatre and to create a new, sustainable model. This study will also explore how a growing anxiety in the Ontario theatre community over seemingly-unknowable audience tastes and encroaching American commercialism characterized the interwar discourse and the founding principles of the post-WWII professional companies, so much so that these anxieties are still undercurrents of contemporary theatre criticism.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Nancy Copeland, Barry Freeman, and Colin Hill for their guidance, patience and suggestions over the course of many years and many chapter drafts. Their unique perspectives and expertise expanded my outlook on this area of research. Thanks also to Robin

Whittaker for his valuable input as external.

I would like to thank the faculty and staff at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and

Performance Studies for their assistance throughout this study. I am grateful to the staff at many libraries and theatres, but especially those at the Toronto Reference Library, Hart House, and the

EJ Pratt Library for accommodating my obscure requests, and to the staff at the Robarts Media

Commons for repeatedly and kindly reminding me how to use the microform scanners.

I would also like to thank Roberta Barker at Dalhousie University for initially piquing my interest in Canadian theatre and archival research during my undergraduate studies.

Finally, I am indebted to my partner, Leete, and to my family and friends for their constant understanding and patience as I disappeared for months at a time into this study.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Professionals Without a Profession……….…………………………………….1

Chapter 1: Definitions and Theoretical Framing………….………………………………….23

Chapter 2: Towards a New Model of Professionalism…….…………………………...…….71

Chapter 3: Developing Field Dynamics and Boundaries Through Professional Models.……99

Chapter 4: Negotiating Professional Status in Post-WWII Ontario Theatre……………...... 157

Conclusion….……………………………………………………………………………….215

Works Cited ….……………………………………………………………………………..222 1

Introduction: Professionals Without a Profession

In the ten years following World War II, a number of professional theatre companies were founded in Ontario; these were a departure from the province’s pre-WWII professional theatre, which was composed almost entirely of foreign stock companies and touring productions. In theatre history, the professional status of these companies is usually treated as undisputed and singular; little analysis is given to what the label of professionalism meant for these companies or how they obtained it.1 The narrative is usually presented that, in the otherwise amateur community of Ontario theatre and in the absence of a professional theatre field, these professional companies were suddenly founded and paved the way for more professional theatre to come. In actuality, the process by which one achieves professional status without an established professional field is inexact, subjective, and undefined. Without the structure of a professional field, public and peer recognition are key to professional status; however, public and peer recognition are also subjective and ever-changing, defined by prominent examples of professionalism, publicity and marketing, colloquial definitions, and the past and current theatrical landscape. This study will interrogate the source of professional status for the first professional theatre companies in Ontario and trace what interwar theatrical models led to their practices and reception. The first of these professional theatre companies were the

New Play Society (NPS, founded in 1946) and the Canadian Repertory Theatre (CRT, founded in 1949); other significant early professional theatres in Ontario included the Jupiter Theatre founded in 1951, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival founded in 1953, and the Crest Theatre

1 Comprehensive sources such as Robert B. Scott’s “Professional Performers and Companies,” as well as more specific studies like Sperdakos’s Dora Mavor Moore and Illidge’s The Glass Cage, do the important work of recounting and recovering the operations and practices of these post-WWII companies, but the professionalism of the companies is left unexamined. 2 founded 1954. These companies emerged from community needs and individual efforts to foster professionalism; their origins were not aided by professional infrastructure or government support. According to their contemporary reviews and publicity, these companies were recognized within their operating years as professional by the media, by their peers, and by their audiences; some were recognized as professional immediately, others reluctantly. What is less obvious at first glance is how precisely they were able to achieve that recognition. A major objective of this study is to determine how these post-WWII Ontario companies were able to achieve recognition of their professionalism and what historically-specific theatrical paradigms they navigated to achieve it. Furthermore, this study will explore why these Ontario companies were able to gain professional status in the post-WWII decade when the interwar Canadian theatre discourse was characterized by anxiety over the lack of Canadian professional theatres.

The 1930s were an active time in the amateur theatre community of Ontario; despite this obvious interest and participation in the theatre from Ontario residents, the few professional companies that achieved some semblance of commercial success during this period were seen as distinctly not Canadian - they were based on pre-WWI models for professional theatre and were often run by American producers. Before the post-WWII Ontario theatres could be thought of as professional, new Canadian theatrical models would need to combine with old models to create the possibility of theatre that was Canadian, professional, and functional. Throughout this period of amateur drama, critics and artists proposed and dissected many theatrical models; they discussed how Ontario might possibly foster the start of a Canadian professional theatre. This study will trace the theatrical examples - or models – on which a professional Canadian theatre could be based that were commonly proposed in the theatrical discourse and practiced in the interwar period. Using these models’ distinguishing characteristics and rhetoric, I will analyze 3 the source of professional Canadian status for the first post-WWII Ontario professional companies. The inter- and post-war professionalization discourse was carried out through articles and reviews published in magazines and newspapers; its major topics of anxiety resonate in today’s Ontario theatre landscape, with numerous critics and journalists worrying over the domination of American culture, the ever-present mystery of what audiences want to see, and mysterious gap between regular theatre-goers and the rest of the local population. As this study traces the theatre in Ontario as it underwent dramatic changes throughout the period of this study we will see the birth of formative cultural dynamics and frustrations that remain woven into the theatre discourse today.

Scholarship overview

Early twentieth-century Canadian theatre topics are underrepresented in Canadian theatre scholarship, especially any in-depth analysis or interpretation of them. Most comprehensive studies and collections of Canada’s theatre history choose a starting point in the latter half of the century – the founding of the Stratford Festival in 1953 or the start of the Canada Council in

1957. Of the scholarship that does focus on the early half of the century, most of it aims to recover and acknowledge significant companies and figures; yet, once these figures are recovered, there is often little further analysis of them by scholars. Later Stages: Essays in

Ontario Theatre From the First World War to the 1970s (published 1997) is perhaps the most complete source on Ontario theatre during the time period pertinent to this study. While not written by a single author, in its selection of essays this volume does cover a sizeable number of the companies, individuals, and events of pre-1970s Ontario theatre. Its essays are divided by category – such as professional, amateur, and university theatre - and so it includes many 4 companies that would not otherwise seem notable due to their non-professional status. Of particular relevance to this study is Robert B. Scott’s “Professional Performers and Companies.”

Scott pulls together vast sources to form an impressively cohesive narrative of professional

Ontario theatres over many decades, from the effect of WWI on the touring system to the emergence of post-WWII professional companies and beyond. The history that Scott produces includes much professional and semi-professional activity prior to the Second World War and, as such, combats the tendency of historians to start accounts of professional theatre post-WWII.

While Scott does not fully unpack the source of professional status for the first professional companies in Ontario, he does begin to illuminate how they can exist as professional milestones in a province that did previously see touring and permanent professional companies; the professional theatre activity in Ontario prior to and during WWII was characterized by an

“attitude that local talent was still second-class”2 and this attitude would change after the war.

Thus, the first post-war professional companies were milestones not because of a complete lack of resident professional theatres in the province before, but because of a shift in valuation and investment in local theatre creators. Scott also brings attention to the influence of the Ontario amateur theatre community, from which he states the Canadian professional theatre emerged.3

This study will make use of Scott’s historical narrative as a structural foundation, particularly his chronological division into companies of the 1920s, 1930s, and then post-WWII years; I will further develop and explore his differentiation between pre- and post-WWII professional theatre in Ontario, and look more closely at whether the professional theatre could be said to emerge directly from the amateur theatre community of the interwar period.

2 Scott 64. 3 Scott 59. 5

Previous to Later Stages, one of the more wide-ranging sources was English-Canadian

Theatre by Eugene Benson and Leonard W. Conolly (published 1987). This work is both briefer and broader in its focus than Later Stages, as its subject matter is all of English-Canada rather than only Ontario. Its section on Ontario theatre is, like Later Stages, broken up into categories such as ‘Professional Theatre,’ 'Amateur Theatre,’ ‘University Theatre.’ English-Canadian

Theatre is less thorough in its research than Later Stages and so it is problematic to use it as a sole source for any particular topic; its broad strokes historical narrative is useful as a starting point, but there is little material this source covers that Scott’s essay does not address in greater detail. A more recent comprehensive source on mid-century Canadian theatre is Susan

McNicoll’s The Opening Act: Canadian Theatre History 1945-53, published in 2011. Opening

Act covers a similar time period and topic to this study, though it falls into the category of acknowledgement, recovery, and anecdotal history, which seek to inform readers that the subject of the history exists and is worthy of attention. Other works that epitomize this type of history include The Glass Cage: The Crest Theatre Story by Paul Illidge and Love and Whisky: The story of the Dominion Drama Festival by Betty Lee, both of which I reference in this study.

These sources generally focus on the positive contributions of their subjects, often neglecting to question or analyze those contributions with a critical lens; however, these sources are also more likely to include the personal intentions and statements of their subjects. In Love and Whisky,

Lee quotes extensively from correspondence between committee members of the very first

Dominion Drama Festival, offering (though not engaging with) insight into the intentions and theatrical views of the Festival’s creators. Vincent Massey’s letters in particular show a grave concern for the persistent conservativism in Ontario against theatre: “one is still conscious of the lingering Puritan traditions which regard the theatre with certain misgivings. I would suggest the 6 dramatic competition during the first year on a conservative and limited basis.”4 Massey’s concern is just one of many in a trend of anxiety from creators over the public perceptions of different types of theatre and performance. Illidge’s The Glass Cage also places importance on the trepidation over public perception when recounting the founding of The Crest Theatre. The

Davis siblings, he wrote, were acutely aware of the expectations audiences would have of a high- level professional production and that opening night upper class audiences would have especially high standards: “the by and large well-heeled opening night audience would expect the velvets, silks, furs and jewellery worn by the cast to be recognizably authentic. It would be taking a chance to use reasonable facsimiles.”5 Both of these sources emphasize the importance of public perceptions of professionalism and legitimacy and how that weighed heavily on the minds of creators working on very visible theatrical projects. In Chapters Three and Four of this study, I will expand on this topic by examining how the media defined popular theatrical models of the

1930s and reflected and codified changing perceptions of professional theatre in the 1940s-50s.

Rubin’s Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings is a collection of excerpts from twentieth century Canadian theatre writing; however, in its organization of readings by theme and stages of Canadian theatre history, it does more than recover and acknowledge. It places the focus of its history not on events, productions, names, and dates, but on discourse from critics and artists. This collection represents the complexity of “ongoing debates”6 by including writing from opposing ideas and goals. By directing its attention to the Canadian theatre discourse,

Rubin’s collection paved the way for this study and other like-minded research to focus on changing paradigms and theatrical models as reflected through both practice and media writings.

4 Massey quoted in Lee 90. 5 Illidge 32. 6 Rubin viii. 7

Case studies are more frequently published in Canadian theatre history scholarship than broader historical overviews, with articles and books often focusing on one artist, one institution, or one company. Frequently, individual scholars will unofficially 'claim' an individual. For example, Paula Sperdakos has published numerous articles7 and one book on Dora Mavor

Moore;8 though Moore is well-known within Canadian theatre history, few sources can be found on her that are not written by Sperdakos. In Dora Mavor Moore: pioneer of the Canadian theatre, Sperdakos covers (among other topics) the founding of the New Play Society (NPS) by

Moore and her son. As the NPS was the first Canadian theatre company in Ontario to be recognized as professional by peers and critics, Sperdakos delves deeper into its professional status than do most sources covering mid-century Ontario theatre. She comes from the point of view that the NPS was inarguably professional, but she examines Moore’s strategies for achieving that status and acknowledges the company’s professionalism emerged largely from

Moore’s professional attitude and determination. Sperdakos also touches on the role media recognition played in NPS’s professional status, noting that critics categorized the company differently in early reviews before it was established as professional in the Toronto theatre landscape. Though an autobiography, Amelia Hall’s Life Before Stratford is the source that bears the most similarity to Sperdakos’s book in terms of influence on this study. Hall devotes more than one chapter to the Canadian Repertory Theatre, one of the first post-WWII professional companies in Ontario, and the professional characteristics it did and did not embody. Both works devote much writing to their subjects’ inner minds while they were each in the midst of producing a professional first, offering insight into the professional atmospheres of each

7 Such as “Dora Mavor Moore: before the New Play Society.” Theatre History in Canada. 10 (Spring 1989): 43-64. 8 Sperdakos, Paula. Dora Mavor Moore: pioneer of the Canadian theatre. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995. 8 company – the emphasis on a “living wage”9 at the CRT and on a professional attitude at the

NPS.

Alan Filewod’s Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in

Canada and Maria Tippett’s Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission are examples of scholarship that analyzes and interrogates typical

Canadian theatre categorization, though the latter work is not solely focused on theatre and covers a variety of Canadian arts and media prior to the Massey commission. Filewod’s work on political theatre in Canada questions the classification of “political theatre” as a category and deconstructs common historical narratives, such as the supposedly widespread Workers’ Theatre

Movement of the 1930s. This is yet another source that delves into the importance of public and media perception and shows how theatre artists would begin to manipulate it effectively, as

Filewod argues a central member of the Workers’ Theatre did a statement of status and purpose that is usually taken at face value by historians. Cecil-Smith’s summation of the Movement in

Canadian Forum is a prime and early example of what this study delves into in Chapter Four, of companies beginning to control the media rhetoric about them to achieve their vision of professionalism or legitimacy, and Filewod’s Committing Theatre is a rare source to contextualize Cecil-Smith’s example as such.

In Making Culture, Tippett produces a cultural history; her work includes analysis of the

British cultural traditions reproduced in early twentieth century Canadian culture, as well as investigations into the origins of cultural milestones (such as the Massey Commission and founding of the Canada Council) and the historical narratives of their creation. This study owes much to Tippet’s (and Filewod’s) willingness to complicate established historical narratives.

This study’s interrogation of categorization and focus on the source of common definitions is

9 Hall 258. 9 inspired by these and other recent works, such as Robin Whittaker’s 2010 dissertation,

“Un/Disciplined Performance: Nonprofessionalized Theatre in Canada’s Professional Era,” for their refusal to reinforce the facile amateur-professional hierarchy found in most older theatre histories. Whittaker especially criticizes previous Canadian theatre history for its “presumption that maturation is analogous to professionalization.”10 This study will acknowledge frequently found sentiments about professional theatre, including its supposed qualitative superiority to amateur; however, I recognize the work these scholars have done to refute the easy definition of professional as “better” and this study will not resort to professionalism as inherently a positive progression from amateurism.

This study will start from the established historical narrative of previous comprehensive studies, that the touring syndicate circuit (more commonly called “the road”) died due to WWI and amateur theatre flourished in the inter-war period before professional theatres began to pop up in Ontario post-WWII, and will re-examine it through the lens of shifting professional and amateur definitions and professional models. In doing so, I will interrogate the professional/amateur categorizations of significant early-to-mid-century theatre companies and will place their classification in the larger context of the historically-specific professional models and of the Canadian theatre professionalization discourse. As such, this study will rely heavily on primary sources such as newspaper and journal articles from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, many of which have not previously been included or discussed in Canadian theatre scholarship.

Methodology

10 R. Whittaker 1. 10

In this study, I organize and analyze examples of professional and amateur Ontario theatre by the theatrical models they represent and the professionalization trends and signifiers they embody.

This approach necessitates a combination of individual case studies, broad historical narratives and trend analysis. Comprehensive secondary works will help form the historical narrative and broad context of this study, while primary sources will ground that narrative in examples and rhetoric from the period. The bulk of the analysis in this study will be based on primary sources from magazines and daily newspapers, chiefly reviews of theatrical productions and articles on the state of the Canadian theatre. As this study is focused on theatre in Ontario, only newspapers from Ontario cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, and Barrie have been used. National magazines such as Saturday Night and Canadian Forum also feature in this study, though only when referring to theatrical activity in Ontario or national trends that manifested in or affected Ontario.

Primary research into daily Ontario newspapers from 1930-1955, as well was monthly and quarterly magazines, focused on identifying terms and phrases that commonly appeared in the professionalization discourse. I quickly discovered that the major theatrical models, both professional and amateur, were discussed in the media using common and oft-repeated rhetoric.

Journalists and practitioners, in order to refer to larger theatrical models, strategies and trends, used certain rhetorical phrases and terms; the rhetoric stood in for the models in a lot of writing from this period. As the interwar theatrical discourse focused increasingly on professionalization, the phrasing and terminology became more consistent starting in the 1930s; thus, newspaper and magazine articles were organized not only by company or artist, but even more effectively by rhetoric. Articles and reviews containing phrases such as “national theatre,” “national drama,” or

“Canadian drama” were related to the National Theatre and Canadian playwright models, while those containing “commercialism,” “anti-commercialism,” or “American commercialism” in 11 reference to the theatre were often referring to the values of the Little Theatre Movement.

Likewise, organization and analysis of primary sources was also conducted using the common rhetoric referring to popular characteristics of professional theatre. For example, compiling every mention of the New Play Society in conjunction with “professional” allowed me to trace the media recognition of the company as professional, while every mention of the New Play Society in conjunction with “contracts,” “wage,” and/or “high-quality” illustrated which professional signifiers were most commonly cited to bolster the company’s professional image. Once common rhetorical phrases referring to theatrical models or professional characteristics were identified, the presence (or absence) of this rhetoric became an invaluable method for easily and quickly evaluating whether a writer was participating in the professionalization discourse, whether they were participating in it regularly, and what trends within that discourse they were discussing. The primary research conducted for this study allowed me to trace theatrical models and professional rhetoric long-term and to see how characteristics of certain models were applied to or claimed by each theatre company.

Key Concepts

To reach functional definitions of “amateur” and “professional” for this study, I draw from critical theories broadly applicable to twentieth century professionalism, such as Pierre

Bourdieu’s field theory, as well as other sources more specifically focused on professionalism in the arts. The definitions and theories from these sources are considered and conceptualized in the context of early twentieth century Canadian perceptions of professional theatre, gathered from newspaper reviews and magazines articles of the time. 12

Though Bourdieu rarely comments on theatre specifically, his field theory and observations on fields of cultural production are applicable to a variety of artistic professions. In this study, his discussion of specialized fields and distinction through aesthetic criteria help us to understand the developing dynamics of the Ontario theatre community, especially during the interwar period. A field becomes smaller and more restricted the more specialized it is; these restricted fields require more educated receivers for their cultural products - receivers with an

“aesthetic disposition”11 towards the specialized codes and criteria of taste within the field.

Criteria for aesthetic distinction within an artistic field is one of the framing concepts this study will use to examine the changing field dynamics of Ontario theatre. Bourdieu in Distinction argues that aesthetic taste in a particular culture is determined not objectively but by those with the most cultural and social capital. Terry Eagleton, in “The Ideology of the Aesthetic,” discusses the consensus within an artistic community of aesthetic tastes and the way in which these values are often used at the service of the political hegemony. In “The Pervasiveness of the

Commonplace,” Claire Cochrane discusses ‘amateurism’ and ‘professionalism’ in relation to qualitative judgments in theatre history scholarship and the resulting omissions therein. Cochrane posits that theatre that does not fit the critical consensus of taste is not only thought of as unprofessional - it is thought of as “not-theatre” and so not worthy of consideration.12 This argument resonates within Canadian theatre historiography, in which the scholarship often begins at the creation of the Stratford Festival and the Canada Council, ignoring companies that came before those and lacked the financial resources, professional infrastructure, and training to be deemed aesthetically and culturally significant. The concept of aesthetic distinction also combines with several other elements to create the restrictions necessary to create a professional

11 Bourdieu Field 119. 12 Cochrane “Pervasiveness” 235. 13 field of cultural production: specialized intra-field ‘codes’ and criteria for ‘good’ and ‘tasteful’ work, training and education (mainly of practitioners but also of audiences), and critics/scholars

(who are likewise educated as receivers and help set the criteria of taste by which others are educated). Throughout the 1930s, characteristics of a restricted professional field of cultural production were increasingly found in the Ontario theatre community, slowly making it more

‘legitimate’ but also more difficult to access.

As theatre is usually considered an atypical profession, due to its lack of fundamental professional traits such as “lengthy academic training in a sufficiently esoteric branch of knowledge, and formal credentials,”13 and is not examined in most scholarship on professions, its process of professionalization can be better understood by examining professional theatre fields further along in the professionalization process. Murray Frame’s “Commercial Theatre and

Professionalization in Late Imperial Russia” addresses specific aspects of the broader cultural concepts of ‘professionalism’ that are normally not applied to the theatre. While the situation of nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian theatre artists is not identical to that of Canadian theatre artists, what is significant and applicable to Canadian theatre professionalization is the fostering, even creation, of cultural esteem in order to professionalize, rather than simply the organization and unification of singular but disconnected professionals. Frame collects and summarizes various definitions of modern professionalism as “groups of formally trained experts whose members acquire reward and social prestige on the basis of the value which society bestows, or is persuaded to bestow, upon their specialized knowledge.”14 I base this study’s foundation on Frame’s broad definition and its collection of professionalism signifiers.

13 Frame 1030. 14 Frame 1025-26. 14

This foundational definition from Frame’s article is complemented with impressions of professional theatre from Canadian media in the interwar period. Most media writers during this period simply conflated professional theatre with foreign touring productions or with the few remaining large repertory or stock theatres, but clearly stated definitions of amateur and professional theatre are difficult to find in the interwar media. In today’s Canadian theatre field, most practitioners and journalists would look to unions or government funding bodies to provide the clearest definition of a theatre professional. In the interwar period, this was impossible: no union yet existed in Canada that encompassed all stage professionals; ACTRA informally represented stage actors when the need arose, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage

Employees (IATSE) represented behind-the-scenes workers in the U.S. and Canada, and

Canadian actors could join the US Actors’ Equity in order to work in the U.S. It was not until the founding of the Stratford Festival that there were enough professional-identifying stage actors in

Canada to warrant a union, leading to the founding of Canadian Actors' Equity in 1954.15

Government intervention and funding lay ahead in the second half of the twentieth century, and there was no overseeing body requiring companies and individuals to define themselves by any particular professional criteria. Yet, as I will argue in this study, there were perceived signifiers of amateurism and professionalism in theatre which critics and practitioners used to differentiate between the two; these characteristics remained largely consistent throughout most of the interwar period, only rapidly evolving post-WWII amidst the first professional Ontario theatres.

In this study I have collected impressions of professional and amateur theatre from the post-

WWI media to create historically-specific definitions, in order to show the drastic shift the definition of professional theatre underwent by the time the first professional companies emerged

15 According to the Canadian Actors' Equity website, the first Equity contracts were issued in 1954, and the first members' meeting was held in 1955. 15 in post-WWII Ontario. These companies distinguished themselves as professional (and not amateur) using self-definition, peer-definition, and the media and community-recognized characteristics of professional theatres, which I will also refer to as professional signifiers.

Professional signifiers are especially necessary in identifying post-WWII professional theatres and deconstructing the source of their professional identity. These companies gained their professional status not from an established definition and method, but through claiming and manipulating signifiers in a changing field.

The other major concept this study employs is that of a theatrical model, such as the models proposed in the Canadian theatre discourse for a professional Canadian theatre. A theatrical model is the conceptual structure, ideological values, and artistic style that would define a theatre company and/or theatre field; a model may be hypothetical or it may be popularized through practice. The idea of a professional model that could grow into a sustainable professional community as opposed to sporadic professional opportunities is vital to the

Canadian theatre professionalization discourse; few critics writing about the possibilities for a professional theatre wanted to operate within the touring system of the recent past or to participate in another country’s professional theatre community. With few exceptions, the strategies they proposed were for new or updated theatrical models that would allow the professional Canadian theatre to work as a long-term industry. Suggestions for the ideal professional Canadian theatre model were made by artists, critics and theatre enthusiasts in articles published in newspapers and journals, opinions expressed in the programmes for theatrical productions, and within organized gatherings among theatre experts. What distinguishes mere suggestions for the Canadian theatre from models for a professional theatre are that a model must be broadly applicable, so structures of numerous companies or even an 16 entire field of companies could be based on it; as well, the professional model should contain an implied or explicit end result of a Canadian professional theatre field. A recommendation’s proposed end result is important to keep in mind, especially when reading early proposals made when the touring system was still dominant. For example: “The Annexation of Our Stage” by

B.K. Sandwell, theatre critic for the Montreal Herald (1900-14) and editor for Saturday Night

(1932-51), is significant in its lamentation for the inability of Canadian actors to practice their art professionally within Canada. However, his remedies do not call for the creation of a Canadian professional theatre. Rather, he would simply replace Canada’s annexation by American theatre with one by British theatre. He writes, “One of the first things to be done for the rescue of the

Canadian stage from this unpatriotic condition [...] is the abolition of selling the Canadian rights along with the American rights to the same New York producer”;16 this suggestion arises less out of a desire for Canadians to be able to produce distinct productions of new plays, and more out of an annoyance at the New York producers for keeping many British plays out of Canada.

Sandwell's proposed solution would have Canadian theatre practitioners participating in the

British theatre professional field. His article does, however, have a place in a longer discussion surrounding a model that calls for an emulation of the British theatrical system and style(s). The emulation of the theatrical style or values of another country presents a clear 'model' for how

Canada’s professional theatre could manifest. The concept of the theatrical model is used in this study as a means of organizing the disparate strands of the Canadian theatre discourse; common rhetoric and characteristics in the recommendations of theatre critics and arts will be used to group their writings with like-minded suggestions.

16 Sandwell “Little Theatre” 19. 17

Overview of this study

This study will be organized as a comparative, trend-based analysis, following patterns in professional and semi-professional rhetoric and practice. In a similar fashion to Canadian

Theatre History: selected readings, which divides writings both chronologically and by major themes, each section of this study will focus on developments in the Ontario theatre community within a specific time-span. As Rubin states in his introduction to Canadian Theatre History,

“[t]here are ongoing debates to be identified[...]. Among them, the proper role of government toward the arts, the historical influences of the Stratford Festival, the role of the regional theatre movement,”17; though Rubin's collection of articles takes a much different form than this project,

I too will seek to find through-lines in “ongoing debates,” in recurring recommendations for

Canadian theatre, and in models for theatrical practice. In this study, companies and individuals are linked not only geographically and chronologically; they are compared based on common influences, the theatrical models they embody, their artistic mandates, and their relationships to professionalism signifiers.

This study is divided into four chapters: the first will establish key concepts, definitions and theoretical background, with each of the three subsequent chapters analysing developments in theatrical professional models, discourse and practice in Ontario within consecutive periods between 1920 and 1955.

Chapter One covers concepts that will frame the entire study, most notably definitions of professional, amateur, and theatrical models, as well as Bourdieu’s field theory. As touched on already in this Introduction, these definitions take into consideration traditional amateur and professional definitions from scholarship on typical professions such as medicine or law. In order

17 Rubin vii. 18 to make these traditional definitions applicable to theatre, I separate these definitions into individual professional characteristics, which I will refer to as signifiers of professionalism.

These working definitions also include considerations of historically specific characteristics and impressions of professional theatre. In early twentieth century Canada, colloquial definitions of professional theatre were influenced by popular notions from abroad of what a professional theatre should resemble. Thus, Chapter One is also concerned with the major cultural influences on early Ontario theatre. With Canadian theatre artists not wanting to participate in the commercialism of the American theatre, Britain and Ireland’s theatrical developments influenced

Canadian theatre’s development, particularly Britain’s quest to found a national theatre and

Ireland’s example of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

This first chapter is where this study will begin to address the effect that public perception of professional theatre has on contemporary professional definitions and signifiers. At the end of

WWI, the public perception of professional theatre was largely dictated by experience and prominent examples - what professional theatre had been seen before in Ontario, which professional theatre one read of in Britain and America. Thus, many of the professionalism signifiers at the beginning of the 1920s were tied to specific venues, audience sizes, budgets, and countries of origin. This connection between public perception of professionalism and the definition of professional that a practitioner must embody will frame much of this study, from the inability of professional theatre to survive in Ontario for decades to the paradigmatic shift post-WWII that allowed smaller Canadian companies to be accepted as professional.

Chapter Two will examine the 1920s and the slow reduction of the pre-WWI touring system in Ontario; this topic will be considered through the lens of professional models represented by touring productions and the growing distaste among Canadians with American 19 commercial theatre. The Canadian theatre discourse is introduced in this chapter through reactions in the media to the continued absence of touring companies in the 1920s, failed attempts to renew pre-WWI professional theatre models, and the eventual acceptance that the pre-WWI theatre system was not coming back.

Though the time period of this study begins after WWI, the theatre of the previous hundred years casts a long shadow over the theatre of the 1920-1950s. Throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth century, Canadian theatre was dominated by touring companies from

America and the U.K. No matter how much control Canadians may or may not have had over what touring shows they saw, British and American plays dominated the theatres of Ontario.

There were the occasional companies that were Canadian-owned and operated, and produced work within Canada rather than bringing it in from elsewhere; a stock company was managed at the Toronto Grand Opera by Quebec-born Charlotte Morrison in the 1870s18 and husband and wife team Ida van Cortland and Albert Tavernier who toured their company only throughout

Canada. However, these companies were in the minority. In Chapter Two, I will examine how the lingering influence of the pre-WWI professional models and the cultural domination from the

U.S. began to manifest distaste in Canadians for American commercial culture, particularly in

Ontario which saw a discernible difference in pre-WWI to post-war touring levels. This distaste for commercialism would go on to characterize much of the Little Theatre Movement’s artistic style, as well as the professionalization discourse.

Emerging field dynamics, community boundaries, and the theatre professionalization discourse in the 1930s will be the areas of focus for Chapter Three. The centre of the community, meaning the community’s ‘mainstream’ consisting of those companies that received the most media coverage and support from larger organizations, began to be defined. The community’s

18 Benson and Conolly 36. 20 centre and aesthetic tastes became more established over the decade, largely through the activities of the Dominion Drama Festival and the Little Theatres, and access to the community’s centre became increasingly restricted. Prominent companies, individuals, and theatre institutions emerged as the centre of the Ontario theatre community during this decade; the delineation of the community’s centre, aesthetics, and barriers began to create dynamics similar to those of a professional field of cultural production, even as the community remained technically amateur.

This was also a decade in which Ontario theatre artists and audiences could further distance themselves from traditional professional theatre models. There was not a total absence of professional theatre in Ontario between the two world wars; however, the professional theatre as it had been provided pre-WWI by touring and resident stock companies became less dominant. Amateur companies began to shape the theatrical landscape in Ontario more and more, because of their growing levels of activity and the Dominion Drama Festival. Some of the most common theatrical models of this decade were not distinctly professional but were nonetheless influential on the theatre’s growth; the Little Theatre Movement, which became the centre of the Ontario theatre community, saw its characteristics gradually come to signify

Canadian theatre during the 1930s. The dearth of a Canadian professional theatre was noted with increased frequency during this decade: “community-based theatre in Toronto had reached a point in the 1930s where it began to supplant the commercial touring system. As local theatre grew in strength and stature, it provided a basis from which an indigenous Canadian professional theatre could emerge after the Second World War.”19 This potential for a new dominant theatre system in Canada inspired writings from theatre critics and practitioners proposing ideas for how

Canada might create a professional theatre and what that might look like. Noteworthy voices in this discourse included Herbert Whittaker and Lawrence Mason writing for The Globe, W.S.

19 Mann and Southgate 59. 21

Milne and R. Keith Hicks, writing for Canadian Forum, B.K. Sandwell writing for Saturday

Night, and Herman Voaden writing for various outlets. Many more articles and reviewers in these publications and others, including The Toronto Daily Star, were published with no one author credited. Arts columns and theatre reviews were regularly a place for critics to slip in broader statements on the theatre. Chapter Three examines some of the most popular models for a professional Canadian theatre that emerged in the 1930s. Models based around Canadian playwriting and a hypothetical national dramatic style were increasingly suggested in the discourse as the desire for a unique cultural identity grew; the idea of creating an actual National

Theatre also remained popular. Even while the professionalization discourse remained patriotic, however, the criteria for aesthetic excellence in the community remained traditional and British- inspired; the marking scheme of the Dominion Drama Festival, which influenced nationwide theatre creators for much of the 1930s, created an implicit professional theatre model centred on its old-fashioned aesthetics.

The fourth and final chapter of this study focuses on five of the first professional theatre companies to emerge between 1946-1955 in Ontario and interrogates the source of their professional and Canadian identities. The analysis in this chapter reveals the importance of harnessing the characteristics and rhetoric of known professional models and even of popular amateur models in order to create a new image of the professional Canadian theatre. The NPS,

CRT, and Jupiter Theatres all used characteristics and rhetoric common to the Little Theatre model; it was a feasible model for companies with small budgets and allowed them to maintain their ties to what had become recognizably Canadian theatre. For their professional status, the

NPS and the Jupiter relied heavily on a few select professionalism signifiers (quality of cast and productions, first and foremost) to solidify their status in the press and community, while the 22

CRT’s similarity to the traditional stock model made its professional status clear. This chapter will go on to examine larger companies such as the Stratford Festival and the Crest Theatre, both of which expanded the image of professional Canadian theatre (precariously established by the

NPS, CRT, and Jupiter) to include high budgets and production values. Through case studies pairing these early professional companies with the theatrical models from which they took the most inspiration, this final chapter paints a larger image of the post-WWII decade as a vital time for the definition of Canadian professional theatre. Though a clear and consistent definition was not reached through these first sporadic companies, they did establish many characteristics of that definition that would allow future professional companies operating outside a conventional professional field to claim their status more easily; arguably, a professional theatre field would not exist in Ontario for years after the time period of this study, and yet professional companies continued to propagate. This chapter attempts to provide, through the application of professionalism signifiers to these particular case studies, critical tools with which one may investigate instances of professionalism in the absence of an established profession.

Chapter 1: Definitions and Theoretical Framing

Most scholarship on professions and professionalization does not include artistic professions such as theatre. Murray Frame specifically notes the lack of studies on theatre as a profession in “Commercial Theatre and Professionalization in Late Imperial Russia,” naming its atypical nature as the cause: “Theatre people are ordinarily absent from studies of the professions because historically they have possessed few of their key attributes, notably lengthy academic training in a sufficiently esoteric branch of knowledge, and formal credentials.”20 This absence presents a challenge for this study, as there is no standard academic definition of “professional theatre” to which one can apply to the first professional companies in post-WWII Ontario. These professional firsts seem to pop up suddenly and singularly in historical narratives because of the lack of a professional theoretical framework to apply to the amateur activity that came before them; it is difficult to determine if and when that amateur activity began to take on professional characteristics when those characteristics have not been clearly codified. Before I can analyse evolving models and professional firsts in Ontario’s theatre history, I must determine what terms like “profession,” “professional,” “professionalization,” and “amateur” denote first when applied generally to theatre, and then when applied to Ontario and Canadian theatre. The process by which artistic occupations become professions is less consistent than in medicine or law, and even when professionalization is accomplished the boundary between amateur and professional in the arts tends to remain permeable and vaguely defined. This chapter will serve as an introduction to key definitions of “professional” and “amateur” from professionalization scholarship, and as a consideration of how elements of these definitions can be applied to the theatre generally and to this study’s period of Ontario theatre. The definitions used by other

20 Frame 1030. 24 studies of professionalism and/or amateurism in theatre, such as Robin Whittaker’s examination of Canadian amateur theatre and Murray Frame’s article on the professionalization of Russian theatre, will contextualize definitional elements of professions for the theatre. For example, one of the significant adjustments necessary in applying “professional” and “amateur” definitions to the theatre is to conceptualize these terms not as binary opposites. For typical professions with clear boundaries, this dual approach may be appropriate; however, for the theatre profession and especially for Ontario theatre’s slow process of professionalization, the professional-amateur binary must be re-considered in ways that incorporate the permeable boundary between the two.

Finally, in this chapter I will offer that while certain characteristics of “professional” and

“amateur” are common across centuries and occupations, other definitional characteristics are historically contingent and affected by public perception in a specific cultural moment.

Characteristics that signify professionalism in one era may signify amateurism in another; a three-hundred-seat theatre in early twentieth century North America was more likely to signify an amateur company, whereas today a venue of that size is often professional. I will outline common associations carried by professional and amateur theatre in the Ontario and the broader

Canadian media post-WWI up until the 1930s, at which point these associations would slowly begin to shift. Tracking these historically and culturally-specific associations will illuminate and contextualize the expectations early professional ventures had to navigate, in addition to the general definitional elements of professionalism they would also have been trying to embody.

Defining a “profession”

For such frequently used terms, “professional” and “amateur” are difficult to define. In casual conversation, it can seem as though these terms are straightforward. A stranger is introduced to 25 you as a professional artist and you would believe you know what that designation implies. You would likely assume this person’s art is his or her full-time occupation and that he or she has advanced training in their artistic medium. You might also assume that this professional’s art is a sufficient source of income - also known as a “living wage.” However, many professional artists find it necessary to supplement their income with work unrelated to their art or to live with extreme frugality (leading to the well-known expression “starving artist”). This is one of many definitional stumbling blocks in combining “professional” with “artist,” which is why I will begin by exploring the definition of “profession” in this section through comprehensive scholarly definitions, applicable to a variety of occupations, to form the backbone of this study’s theoretical framework. While there are some characteristics that all professions share, the connotations of “profession” change depending on the field to which it is applied and the historical period in which it is used.

In “Community Within a Community: The Professions,” William J. Goode defines a

“profession” by listing the general characteristics of a professional community:

(1) Its members are bound by a sense of identity. (2) Once in it, few leave, so that it is a terminal or continuing status for the most part. (3) Its members share values in common. (4) Its role definitions vis-a-vis both members and non-members are agreed upon and are the same for all members. (5) Within the areas of communal action there is a common language, which is understood only partially by outsiders. (6) The Community has power over its members. (7) Its limits are reasonably clear, though they are not physical and geographical, but social. (8) Though it does not produce the next generation biologically, it does so socially through its control over the selection of professional trainees, and through its training processes it sends these recruits through an adult socialization process.21 Goode is basing his definition on a variety of typical professions. He emphasizes the social aspects of the professional community; its members are socialized to understand and reinforce the rules, hierarchies, language, boundaries, and criteria for distinction in the profession. In

21 Goode 194. 26

Goode’s definition, a profession is a community of practitioners based around a particular occupation or subject; it has its own infrastructures, boundaries and established dynamics such as a hierarchy of members, a common language (professional terminology), common values/tastes, and criteria for distinction. Robin Whittaker, in his dissertation on amateur Canadian theatre, uses the following passage from Murray Frame in which Frame establishes the definitions of

“amateur” and “professional” that he will be applying to his own theatre history work.22 In

Frame's introduction to “Commercial Theatre and Professionalization in Late Imperial Russia,” he summarizes the definition of a profession based on his reading of many other profession studies: “Historians generally characterize the modern professions as groups of formally trained experts whose members acquire material reward and social prestige on the basis of the value which society bestows, or is persuaded to bestow, upon their specialized knowledge.”23 He states that this is a “core definition that implicitly informs all scholarship on the professions.” For his own purposes, Whittaker focuses in particular on how the label ‘professional’ legitimizes an occupation while ‘amateur’ labels activities as “haphazard and illegitimate.”24 Looking at the commonalities between Goode’s and Frame’s definitions, a “profession” can be broken down into the following defining characteristics, each of which I will evaluate in relation to the theatre:

Social Community, Formal Training, Material Reward, Social Prestige, and Societal Value

Placed on Specialized Knowledge.

Social Community

In most cases, the existence of a professional community is a necessary precondition for the other characteristics of a profession. Even in occupations where one’s work is solitary, the social

22 R. Whittaker 45. 23 Frame 1025. 24 R. Whittaker 46. 27 aspect of a profession is necessary for its advancement, its collective identity, and its reinforcement as a unified vocational sphere (rather than a series of unconnected individuals practicing similar occupations). In order to ensure the maintenance of specialized skills and social prestige, there must be a professional association or communication network consisting of other professionals with whom one can share expertise, values, language and technological advancements. There are prominent theories on social groups that can help us frame the notion of a “group of formally trained experts” and illuminate how such a group is formed and by what rules it functions. One such framework is Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. Colloquially, the term

‘field’ is frequently used to refer to a profession – expressions like “field of medicine” or “field of study” are common. However, Bourdieu’s concept of “field” is both broader and more specific than this casual definition; it encompasses a variety of complex social spaces. Each field operates with specific but evolving dynamics, and the agents of that field develop strategies for navigating those dynamics with an aim to improving their positions within the field. One can improve his or her position in a particular field by accumulating symbolic capital that is of value in that field. Those within the field are socialized to value certain signifiers of capital and certain types of capital over others; a particular credential or training certification will be a source of capital in one field and not in another; an artistic aesthetic or set of knowledge/skills will place you high on the hierarchy in one field, whereas it may be seen as old-fashioned in another.

Bourdieu defines a number “field” types. A professional field is one with more rigid rules of conduct and distinction than those found in casual social spaces. The most relevant type of professional field for this study is his “field of cultural production,” which Bourdieu describes as a “system of objective relations” between active agents participating in the production of culture and also as a “site of struggles for monopoly of the power to consecrate, in which the value of 28 the works of art and belief in that value are continuously generated.”25 One of the transitions this dissertation will track is that of Ontario theatre as it began to change from a series of social communities to a field of cultural production, in which the product (and the audience’s positive reception of it) becomes more important than the social well-being of the participants. Any community or profession is a complex social field; a professional theatre field is a community and a field of cultural production. Anxiety over this transition to a field of cultural production can be seen especially clearly in Canadian Forum’s “The Little Theatres” column of the early

1930s, as detailed in Chapter Three of this study; the column was often filled with concerns over what audiences want and how to cater to them.

Bourdieu states that one of the major dynamics in a field of cultural production is the generation of the value of art through a set of accepted aesthetic tastes. For an artistic field to be a profession – for it to produce pieces of art that are desired, consumed and paid for – there must be a standard by which art is judged as good or bad. Bourdieu describes the concept of

“distinction” in a cultural field as that which is given to those who meet or exceed the standards of aesthetic taste. Within a field of cultural production such as theatre, the idea of ‘distinction’ can apply both to the makers and the consumers of the cultural products. By possessing preferences for and knowledge of certain aesthetics, and/or the skills with which to reinforce those aesthetic tastes in one’s own work, one displays proper training in and understanding of the field’s aesthetic standards. Thus, there is a distinction between those persons higher up in the field who possess acceptable tastes and those lower in the field who lack the appropriate knowledge or skills. Those aesthetic tastes that are seen as more advanced, as representative of a better education and socialization, are part of the dynamics of the field and inhabitants may try to use them to better their positions.

25 Bourdieu Field of Cultural Production 78. 29

Inherent in the concept of a professional community is that some who strive to be inducted into the profession must be excluded. Without exclusion, there cannot be boundaries to the profession, there cannot be distinction between professional and amateur, and there cannot be unified values or identity. To ensure adequate levels of exclusion there must be profession-wide standards by which an apprentice/applicant may be admitted or denied. In professions such as medicine, these criteria are the most strictly enforced: a doctor cannot legally practice unless experts chosen by the profession to assess competence deem him or her sufficiently skilled. As one moves from professions such as medicine towards more artistic and less legally-regulated fields, the barrier between professional and non-professional is more permeable and vaguely defined. A person may advertise themselves as a ‘professional photographer’ with no formal training and established professional photographers have little legal recourse to bar this person from practicing. However, that so-called professional may produce ‘bad’ work, by the common aesthetic standards of modern photography, on enough occasions that their reputation is ruined and they are no longer hired. In artistic professions, it is standards and principles of aesthetic taste that are used to exclude or include aspiring artists. Those who do not meet the criteria of aesthetic taste, who create ‘bad art,’ are kept in the amateur community where personal fulfillment rather than ‘good art’ is seen as the goal. Aesthetic tastes are determined by those with social and cultural capital, those at the centre of the community; thus, discussion of professionalism and acceptable aesthetic tastes are inextricable from discussion of the mainstream, as opposed to the margins. In the 1930s Ontario theatre community, as covered in

Chapter Three of this study, there were significant artists working in non-realist, non-traditional forms, in languages other than English, unencumbered by attempts to adhere to British standards of theatrical quality; however, these artists and their forms factor less into the discussion of 30 models influential to professionalism because they remained marginalized in the community as it moved towards professionalism. Innovators and those who transgress accepted aesthetics often meet with initial resistance from their field, though sometimes they are later embraced and their styles incorporated into the field's aesthetic tastes.

Formal Training

Formal training consists of the qualifications, skills and knowledge necessary to meet the standards for inclusion set by the professional community, as well as the means by which these qualifications are gained (schools, apprenticeships) and assessed (tests, observation by senior professionals). Frame describes this educational requirement for admission into the profession as

“regulated by [the profession’s] senior members” and typically consisting of “rigorous specialist training and the acquisition of recognized, accredited qualifications.”26 The accessibility and difficulty of this specialist training are potential barriers for those seeking entry into the profession and thus ensure a certain level of exclusivity. In professions where the qualifications are not mutually agreed upon by the community and/or are not legally regulated, formal training becomes an asset but not a mandatory requirement for entry. In artistic professions, formal training and qualifications are less effective as an assurance to patrons of quality and competence and are less effective as a means of exclusion; training in the arts therefore becomes one of several means by which an aspiring professional can learn to identify, replicate, and eventually advance the field’s aesthetic tastes. For Bourdieu, education is also a means by which one can socially gain access to closed-off fields. The level and source of one’s education can be a form of social capital: Bourdieu states “the educational capital held at a given moment expresses, among

26 Frame 1025. 31 other things, the economic and social level of the family of origin.”27 While scholastic success may seem to be a meritocracy, it is also determined by accessibility of education socially and financially, which complicates the popular perception that those who remain amateur are simply not capable.

This particular perception, that professionals are competent while amateurs are not, serves to reinforce the profession’s occupational monopoly. In The Politics of The Arts Council,

Hutchison references a “repeated worry about professions already overcrowded” as being at the core of the dismissal of amateur arts in Britain; the lack of funding there for the amateur arts “is a reminder that professionalism is not only a description of the inherent nature of a particular occupation, but also the means of controlling entry to an occupation.”28 Not only do training qualifications limit the number of people that can enter a profession, they can also prevent business from going to those outside the profession by implying that those without the proper training are incompetent. Sometimes this is beneficial to consumers, as in fields like medicine where practice by an amateur could be dangerous. In other cases, under the guise of ensuring qualifications and training, “[p]rofessionalism can all too easily act as a form of social closure”;29 by putting a select few practitioners of distinction in charge of access, training schools in many professions have historically admitted fewer women, people with disabilities, or people of ethnic minorities due to unconscious or conscious bias. In the theatre, amateur practice is not characterized as dangerous, per se, but the effects of positioning the amateur as incompetent can be found in media rhetoric; as we will see in early twentieth-century media discussions of amateur and professional theatre, the former is often characterized as dull, unskilled, and self-indulgent.

27 Bourdieu Distinction 99. 28 Hutchison 55. 29 Hutchison 55. 32

Within the theatre profession, the training necessary to be a practitioner is not standardized. What training is necessary for professional employment is at the discretion of individual professional companies, though naturally their discretion is heavily influenced by the aesthetic tastes of the field. The ranking of one school (or type of school) over another generally comes down to personal preference. One casting director may have had good experiences hiring actors from a particular university and so will give special attention to resumes from its alumni; another may prefer graduates of theatre conservatories because he or she attended one. A certain amount of exclusion, however, must exist to maintain a profession’s legitimacy. Michael

Sanderson writes about the significance of exclusion for professional theatre in the U.K.:

An occupation continually flooded by casual outsiders without qualifications finds it difficult to be taken seriously as a profession or as any kind of career at all. So it was with acting prior to the 1930s. An important part of the move towards professionalization was the exclusion of the amateur and the enforcement of the closed shop in the West End and subsequently in the provinces.30

This lack of consensus on formal training is one of many reasons some discount theatre from being a ‘profession,’ as Frame notes,31 and do not include it in historical or sociological studies of professionalism. While formal training does not form as official a barrier in theatre as it does in typical professions, it does perform similar functions of legitimizing the profession and making it more challenging to gain admittance and distinction (especially for those unable to afford or access training) simply by increasing the difficulty of meeting the standards of aesthetic taste in a cultural field.

Material Reward

30 Quoted in R. Whittaker 54. 31 Frame 1030. 33

One of the most popularly known factors separating ‘professional’ from ‘amateur’ is financial remuneration; the professional receives some form of payment for work completed, whereas for the amateur the occupation is performed for the social and/or personal fulfilment. In casual conversation, many treat payment as the singular distinction between amateur and professional.

However, in any profession this distinction is complicated on an individual and collective basis by the rate of pay, frequency of pay, frequency of practice, and the presence or absence of other characteristics of professionalism. In artistic fields, the distinction of financial remunerations is further complicated by the nebulous space between amateur and professional that aspiring artists often find themselves in, sometimes for years. This in-between space comes with non-standard rates and delayed payments.

There are numerous models for how financial compensation can operate within a profession, depending on the relation between that profession’s services or products and commercial performance. Frame describes certain professions that “are able to apply their expertise in a ‘disinterested’ manner because most of them received fixed fees or, in the case of so-called ‘socialized’ professions, state salaries.”32 These professions are in contrast to more profit-oriented, commercial ones in which payment is directly tied to commercial performance.

However, Frame notes, “all professional occupations, irrespective of the degree to which they are commercialized, obviously depend on demand for the services they provide”;33 even government-regulated jobs and/or those that provide necessary services rely on a general public trust in their competence and demand for their expertise. Guilds or unions are one of the methods by which a professional field can protect its members’ ability to demand fair remunerations for their work, as well as ensure safe working conditions. Not only does a union serve to limit the

32 Frame 1026. 33 Frame 1027. 34 number of members who can join the field, it also preserves the profession’s reputation of competence by preventing potential clients from giving their business to untrained practitioners.

The main function served by having a professional association and/or a union in one’s profession is to “protect an economic and social advantage by controlling access to an occupational group, regulating mobility within it, and establishing a service monopoly.”34 In artistic professions such as theatre, unions must contend with that space between professional and amateur either by finding ways to accommodate semi-professional work or by attempting to eliminate it. In modern day Canadian theatre, for example, the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association introduced several agreements designed to make it less cost-prohibitive for professionals to work alongside semi- professionals and amateurs. These agreements came after decades of the Association making it more difficult for union actors to engage in non-union work, despite this practice becoming more desirable and common among professional actors. Should similar practices become common without a union finding a way to either legitimize or eliminate them, they risk losing their service monopoly.

Social Prestige

The term ‘social prestige’ can be most aptly explained using the concepts of ‘social capital’ and

‘cultural capital’ as described by Bourdieu in Distinction. Social and cultural capitals are both forms of symbolic capital - that is, capital with no value besides what it represents. A Bachelor’s degree holds no inherent value, but it represents years of study, accumulated knowledge and skills, and the reputation of the institution from which it was obtained; it may also be an accepted qualification for entry into a profession. Symbolic forms of capital are often disguised as holding some principled or cultural value of their own, beyond social or professional distinction: one

34 Frame 1027. 35 does not go to the opera explicitly to gain cultural capital, but to ‘better’ oneself and to appreciate the art on display. Cultural capital is defined and divided into categories by Bourdieu:

Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart.35

In cultural fields, the social prestige of professional artists is directly correlated to their cultural capital and the cultural capital held by those who consume their artistic products. For cultural capital to exist in an artistic profession, other field dynamics must already be in place – particularly standards of aesthetic taste. As Bourdieu states, “[t]aste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed”:36 those who hold distinguished aesthetic tastes, whether as consumers or practitioners, gain cultural capital and in turn can affect the evolution of aesthetics and of classification within the cultural field.

Conversely, those who create or consume work classified by the field as “ugly” or “vulgar” are in possession of little cultural capital. Social capital, on the other hand, is gained or lost through social relations in the field. Bourdieu, in “The Forms of Capital,” defines social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.” One’s social capital is bolstered by the number of connections one can form and maintain within one’s field(s), and the various types and amounts of capital accumulated by those to whom one is connected. So, a close connection - perhaps by family or profession - with a person or group with

35 Bourdieu “Forms of Capital” 282. 36 Bourdieu Distinction 6. 36 high social and cultural capital raises your social capital as well. Publicly stated appreciation from an influential agent in your field can have the same affect; for a theatre professional, this may take the form of a positive review from a prominent and respected critic.

Those professional artists who work for modest financial remunerations, modest aesthetic success, and modest recognition are granted little social prestige. Frequently, moderately successful theatre practitioners possess cultural capital, but only in the upper rungs of the professional hierarchy does an actor, for example, gain much social capital. On its own, social prestige is not reliably indicative of an individual’s professional status in the theatre. However, the realistic potential for social prestige from your occupation is symptomatic of a field’s professionalism. Achieving social prestige is also an effective means of furthering the professionalization process; members of a burgeoning profession often gain social prestige from success in neighbouring but more recognized professions as a means of legitimizing their own field.

Value Placed on Specialized Knowledge/Services

The value society places on a profession’s specialized knowledge/services may seem similar to the concept of social prestige; both are based around the necessity of public and peer acknowledgement to establish and maintain professional status. However, in this case it is the value placed on the knowledge, services and/or products. To ensure society places value on its services, a profession must sustain its monopoly and the public’s demand. These represent another reason that professions maintain exclusivity in their membership; “[p]rofessionals are not detached from the market, therefore, but must manipulate it for self-serving reasons,” writes

Frame, continuing on to note that “George Bernard Shaw famously described the professions [as] 37

‘conspiracies against the laity’.”37 By advertising its exclusivity of membership based on standards of ability and specialization of knowledge, the profession increases the perceived quality of their skills and reinforces their own monopoly by devaluing the skills of amateurs.

Societal value and monopoly on specialized knowledge/services are what allows a profession to collect material reward for its services, as too much valid competition from amateurs would lower or even eliminate standard payment rates.

The value placed by society on professional knowledge and services is not necessarily related to the practical usefulness of the services in question or frequency of need by the average person; the societal value can change depending on the culture and how well a profession has succeeded in creating social/cultural capital and a service monopoly. With Canadian theatre of the early twentieth century, for example, one can see how the same services (acting, directing, playwriting) were valued in other countries but not in our own. Many Canadian theatre artists were able to become professionals by moving to the U.K. or to America; B.K. Sandwell’s 1912 article, “The Annexation of Our Stage,” states that one could “take up any other art known to humanity” and practice it to your “heart’s content in Toronto,” but not the theatre – to practice that, one must practice elsewhere. It was not a matter of artistic skills being undervalued in

Canada or theatrical skills being generally undervalued: it was simply not part of the culture at that time in Ontario (and in Canada at large) to value homegrown theatrical skills. The value of these services was determined not solely by societal need or demand, but by cultural norms, traditions, and aesthetic tastes. A major part of the professionalization process for Canadian theatre would therefore be the training of society to value the skills of local theatre practitioners.

By deconstructing the characteristics of a “profession” and contextualizing them for the theatre, I can surmise that a profession is an exclusive field of practitioners with a perceived

37 Frame 1027. 38 specialization of knowledge and skills and an acknowledged, effective monopoly over a set of services and/or products. In artistic professions like the theatre, the exclusivity and the specialized knowledge and skills are largely based on the field’s established aesthetic tastes, knowledge of which serves as a barrier to entry in place of the legally-regulated barriers typical to more standard professions. A professional person or company is one who has gained admittance to the profession through official channels; as will become apparent throughout the rest of this study, in the absence of a professional field, an individual or company may gain professional status through their possession and assertion of one or more professional characteristics (or signifiers) to the point at which their patrons and the appropriate media channels accepts them as professional.

Conceptualizing “Professional” and “Amateur”

Many of the characteristics of a profession clearly emerge from professionals’ desire to distinguish themselves from amateurs; the amateur is set up as incompetent in order to establish the professional as competent. However, in analyzing practical examples of professionalism and amateurism and the professionalization process in Canadian theatre, it is not accurate or beneficial to think of professional vs. amateur as binary opposites. Whittaker frequently uses the term “non-professionalized” rather than “amateur,” which centres the distinction on the presence or absence of the professionalization process. This terminology highlights the existence of professionalization as a process that can be undertaken or not, rather than an inevitably; yet, for the purposes of this study, I will continued to use the term “amateur.” As we will see, “amateur” holds many unique characteristics and signifiers, separate from its absence of the professionalization process. If indeed the distance between amateur and professional is a lengthy 39 and complicated process, then we must conceptualize amateur and professional in a manner that allows for more flexibility in positioning and greater complexity than binary opposites.

One of the ways in which this study will be using the terms ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ will be in the context the process of professionalization; these terms are at either end of a process that can be undertaken by a field, a company or collective, or an individual. Those undertaking the process can spend any length of time anywhere along the process, meaning there are a greater number of positions available than just amateur or professional. Thus, professional and amateur can be considered as ends of a spectrum rather than as a value hierarchy or binary. As the process proceeds, one’s position on the spectrum shifts rapidly or gradually. The spectrum of amateur to professional represents those undergoing the process as well as those purposefully or unintentionally plateauing at a position somewhere in between, which allows us to consider that the completion of the professionalization process is not an inevitability. Conceptualizing amateur and professional as ends of a spectrum in the theatre also allows for the fact that both amateur and professional companies and individuals can and do co-exist within the larger community of

Ontario theatre. Amateur theatre creators may feel a sense of community with professional theatre workers, and vice versa. Discussing this separation in reference to state-funding in British theatre, Vaughan Williams states, “the humblest amateur in a village felt himself to be part of a hierarchy which stretched upwards to those whose names are world famous. But if the two branches of the art are hermetically segregated we should lose that vitality in English art which comes from making it creative from the top to the bottom.”38 Even his use of the term ‘hierarchy’ implies that amateur theatrics are only a rung on the ladder towards professionalism, rather than a potential end in and of themselves; conceiving of it as a spectrum implies that neither end is higher than the other. Finally, for the purposes of this study, the spectrum conception allows for

38 Quoted in Hutchison 46. 40 the variety of ways in which theatre is an atypical profession. A practitioner can possess characteristics of amateurism and professionalism simultaneously, and professionalism can exist in the theatre without all of the full definition’s components being present.

The barrier between amateur and professional is vaguely defined in the theatre, allowing practitioners to create their own means of entry. Many of the first professional theatre companies in Ontario became recognized as professional through self-definition and the repeated use of specific professionalism characteristics and rhetoric in their public presentation. For these groups, the characteristics of professionalism become rhetorical tools for achieving professionalism rather than symptoms of professionalism achieved. Professional and amateur can therefore also be considered as collections of characteristics that signify one or the other status

(which I will refer to as ‘signifiers’) that are concrete, social, or aesthetic. These signifiers can then be emphasized or minimized, depending on where one wants to place oneself publicly on the amateur-professional spectrum. An example of a concrete professionalism signifier would be contracts of employment; in an established profession, it becomes a legal requirement to use them and in 1946, the New Play Society of Toronto used contracts for their actors in order to seem more professional, despite being under no legal imperative to do so. They simply recognized that a contract signifies professionalism and used that signifier to re-position themselves.

In most traditional professions, especially those that are legally regulated, there is a clear indicator of belonging; in the theatre, because there is a liminal space between amateur and professional, practitioners can more freely negotiate their status. They can exist somewhere on the amateur-professional spectrum, rather than being strictly one or the other, and they can 41 manipulate signifiers to gain professional status by de-emphasizing amateur features and publicizing their more professional characteristics.

Professional and Amateur Signifiers

I derive the following individual elements from Goode’s and Frame’s definitions: the existence of an exclusive professional field (formalized by a professional association); formal training facilities that teach the specialized skills/knowledge of the profession; standardized material rewards for professionals in exchange for their specialized knowledge and/services; the opportunity for social prestige within the field; societal value placed on the specialized knowledge/services, resulting in a clientele, employers, and/or customers; a large percentage of the profession’s members being regular practitioners (what constitutes ‘regular’ to be determined by standards of the field). Professionalism signifiers can also come from mimicking the specific characteristics of pre-existing professions. Returning to the example of employment contracts, these legal documents are not an integral element of the definition of a profession but so many professions use them that they become a signifier of professionalism. In Canadian theatre of the early- to mid-twentieth century, many professionalism signifiers emerged from traits of British and American professional theatre and from adjacent Canadian professions, such as radio.

“Amateur” is often used to connote all qualities that are opposite to professionalism, and so signifiers of amateurism are a mix of positive-to-neutral characteristics and negative stereotypes. To a theatre industry that has not fully professionalized, an active amateur theatre is viewed as a threat. Because the professionalization process involves gaining social prestige and the recognition of value from those outside the profession, the proximity of an active group of amateurs providing the same service for less cost can be a hindrance to the professionalization 42 process. As Hutchison discusses in reference to the early years of the British Arts Council, amateur theatricals have often been viewed as an obstacle to professionals: “The dominant attitude towards amateur drama inside the Arts Council is expressed in a comment in the Annual

Report for 1951-52,” which states “To the many problems the theatre has to confront in the provinces there seems to be added nowadays the mounting strength of the amateur theatrical movement.”39 This is particularly true when the general public is more familiar with the amateur theatre community than they are with the newly professionalized companies. Generally, the solution to this has been to emphasize the added training and technique of the professionals, resulting in ‘lack of training’ and ‘incompetence’ as amateurism signifiers. Despite so many amateur signifiers coming from this fear of amateurism, the term also has some neutral or even positive signifiers. As Cochrane notes in “The Pervasiveness of the Commonplace,” the word

‘amateur’ has its roots in the Latin amare (‘to love’); the amateur’s reason for practicing is the enjoyment they derive out of their practice. Frequently, this enjoyment is seen as a complete replacement for material reward, with the implication that amateurs enjoy the practice far more than do professionals and/or that amateurs never receive any material reward for their work. This opposition between personal reward and material reward has historically led to huge gaps between government funding of amateur and professional arts, even within the same occupation;

“Amateur activities are seen not as having intrinsic merit and strength as arts activities but as part of ‘some wider general social service’.”40 Despite many community theatres possessing devoted audiences, the activity as performed by amateurs is perceived as being for the benefit of the amateurs themselves, rather than for patrons – in other words, the creator and the consumer are thought of as one and the same. As Hutchison suggests, “‘amateur’ is often a synonym for self-

39 Hutchison 49. 40 Hutchison 50. 43 indulgence, many amateur groups are more concerned with their social activities than with artistic achievement.”41 If this collusion of the benefactor and the practitioner can be read as self- indulgence, the flip side of that reading is the more charitable view that participation in the arts is a basic human need; amateur arts, then, are still a ‘general social service’ but a less self-indulgent one.

The notion of amateur arts as a social service, for the benefit of the practitioners, is specific to historical periods where professional arts are enshrined as both natural and superior; the social service notion places the emphasis on the process rather than the cultural product (in contrast to a professional field of cultural production). This emphasis on process can lead (and often has led) to the idea that amateurs produce work that is of a lower quality than professionals, or that is less aware of general advancements in the field as a whole; paradoxically, the lack of emphasis on production of a finished product can lead others to infer that the amateur produces less commercial and therefore more adventurous work. In Robert Hutchison and Andrew Feist’s

Amateur Arts in the UK, they outline a professional-amateur spectrum containing different sub- spectra, such as artistic aspirations, level of income, derivativeness/innovation of style, and time allocated to the artform.42 As Whittaker points out in his dissertation, this way of looking at professional-amateur activity “frees the investigator from the inherited terminology that traps the discourse in a qualifying professional/amateur binary.”43 In interwar Canadian theatrical discourse, many of these sub-spectra that Hutchison and Feist note in the UK could be seen as means of differentiating between different types of amateur theatre. While ‘amateur’ carries with it many contradictory signifiers during this time period, the most stereotypically inferred ones when discussing amateur arts are a lack of training or skills, self-indulgence, and the production

41 Hutchison 54. 42 Hutchison and Feist 10. 43 Whittaker 42. 44 of lower quality and/or artistically inferior and derivative works. More positive signifiers (still many of which are somewhat stereotypical) are that amateurs focus on process rather than product, are less commercial than professionals, and receive little to no remunerations for their work besides the joy of practice and of socialization with people of similar interests.

Whether amateur theatre companies in the twentieth century were considered more or less artistically innovative than professional groups is dependent on whether the companies in question fall within the Little Theatre Movement. Traditionally, amateur theatricals were considered to be conservative and derivative of popular commercial theatre; late nineteenth and early twentieth century private theatricals in the U.K. and North America were frequently smaller versions of successful productions from the West End and Broadway. Cochrane states that, historically, both “practitioners and spectators of amateur theatre” have remained

“obstinately resistant to the avant-garde and comfortably happy with the status quo.”44 The lack of financial and material resources these companies possessed resulted in diminutive copies of well-known professional productions; these were often seen as a sign of “a wilful resistance to would-be agents of artistic progress.”45 However, the more adventurous amateur companies like the Little Theatres could take freedom in their lack of financial restraints: their budgets were lower, their box office goals were less lofty, and so their potential to take risks was higher. When these companies did receive donations or funding, it was generally seen as a charitable donation rather than an investment with the possibility of a return. Hart House Theatre is one example of a non-professional theatre that was able to experiment artistically with design and production; numerous American Little Theatres were innovative within playwriting and acting styles. So,

44 Cochrane “Pervasiveness” 233-34. 45 Cochrane “Pervasiveness” 234. 45 while many signifiers of professionalism and amateurism span occupations and eras, there are always some that are created by their historical and cultural context.

‘Professional’ and ‘Amateur’ Signifiers in Canadian Theatre, 1918-30

In this section, I will outline the signifiers of theatrical professionalism and amateurism found in the post-WWI era Canadian media, from the writings of critics and practitioners published in The

Globe, The Toronto Daily Star, and magazines such as Saturday Night. Prevalent images of theatrical professionalism in this era were derived from the only professional theatre to which most Canadians had been exposed, which was imported from Britain and the U.S. The professional and amateur signifiers common in the 1920s, and the popularity of some signifiers over others, would then go on to inform the professionalism models and proposals of the 1930s.

As this Chapter moves from a discussion of broadly applicable definitions of a “profession” to more colloquial characterizations in a specific period and place, we will find that there are also different categories within the “professional” and “amateur” theatre with their own particular connotations and signifiers. I start this outline purposely in the 1920s as a way of presenting a landscape of professional and amateur theatre before the first major steps towards professionalization began; as this study moves forward through the 1930s-to-50s, certain signifiers outlined here will shift with changing cultural trends and through the boundary- pushing efforts of ambitious amateur groups and early professional companies.

The distinction between professional and amateur theatre in print media of the 1920s is not always immediately clear. This is particularly evident in reviews and listings from and/for

Toronto, which, due to its population size, was still a popular stop for foreign touring productions while also boasting many amateur theatres. Both professional and amateur theatre 46 productions were often discussed within the same arts column in daily newspapers and in the magazine Saturday Night. The latter publication featured a “Music and Drama” column during the 1920s; though a national publication, most of its reviews and listings were for Toronto, such as touring productions at the Royal Alexandra and Loew’s Yonge Street Theatre. However, when Hart House Theatre, university, or otherwise amateur theatre productions were reviewed

(and more weeks than not, at least one such production was included), there was no clear division made in the writing or formatting between the professional and the amateur. This was also often the case in The Globe and Star, though the newspapers were less likely to review several productions side-by-side due to their more frequent publication. There are several conclusions suggested by this lack of clear distinction. First, amateur productions were seen by critics as having merit, as being worthy of discussion, especially those from Hart House and other companies with cultural capital. However, this may also be a case of professional-amateur distinction already being evident to readers; as Cochrane states in “The Pervasiveness of the

Commonplace,” familiarity with popular practices can lead to the omission of those practices from the period’s writings. The perceived difference in levels of professionalism between a foreign touring show and a local amateur production may have been so obvious to readers that no distinction needed to be made in print. If the distinction was indeed clear, then there would have been little fear or anxiety among visiting professionals that they may have been confused with amateurs, though there was still anxiety that amateurs were souring audiences on theatre in general.46 Professional companies used different venues and were from abroad – there was little chance of confusing their shows with a Hart House Theatre production. While at first glance at

46 British actor Maurice Colbourne, for the New York Times in 1940: “The trouble with the Little Theatres is that their necessarily inexpert acting alienates even their own audiences […] for to them a play comes to mean a dull thing to be avoided” (127). 47 an arts column the professional and amateur may seem indistinguishable in tone and formatting, the categorization was clearly evident from the venue and the company’s country of origin.

These foreign professional touring companies and their fairly consistent practices were the source of most professional signifiers during this decade. Especially in larger Ontario cities

(the most common stops for touring productions), these companies defined audiences’ image of professional theatre. Theatrical professionalism meant performing successful plays from

Broadway and the West End, as well as standards from the popular and classical repertoires; it meant specific venues, with more than a thousand seats and the box office power to fill them; it meant a certain set of aesthetic tastes derived from traditional British, American, and sometimes

French theatre. In a 1930 review of a Hart House Theatre production, the reviewer writes, “I doubt if one could see better staging on an amateur stage in Canada. Of course, the production lacked the pulsing accelerated tempo it would have received at the hands of competent French interpreters, but one has learned not to expect the impossible.”47 The comparison with French theatre is logical - the production being reviewed is of an English translation of a French comedy

- but the sentiment, that audiences must temper their expectations of Canadian theatre, can be found in numerous reviews from this period. “[W]hen a play is given at some local theatre, shall

[the critic] measure it by the best that he has seen in London, Paris, or New York? Or shall he consider Toronto a ‘road town,’ and measure the play by the average of the second or third-rate companies which are about all that are usually supplied to this continent outside of Broadway?”, writes one critic in a 1927 Globe article.48 The journey in the coming decades towards a

Canadian professional theatre would be as much about changing the public’s image of theatrical professionalism as it was about changing the dynamics of the theatre field and community. The

47 “Little Theatres” 118. 48 “Compromise or The Ideal” 20. 48 common definitions would have to be changed to include local theatre, different venues, and smaller budgets.

Theatrical professionalism meant ‘foreign theatre’ to Ontario audiences; by extension, local theatre was automatically amateur. If, during the 1920s and 30s a theatre professional was referred to as Canadian, it was assumed that this is a Canadian-born professional who moved elsewhere to pursue their career. In a 1919 Canadian Bookman article, Harcourt Farmer begins his discussion of Canadian play-writing by stating, “By ‘Canadian playwrights,’ I don’t mean persons of Canadian descent, who, migrating to New York or London, have written popular successes.”49 Farmer must specify what he means, because the migrated writer would be commonly assumed meaning of ‘Canadian playwright’ - there is no terminology in place to indicate a playwright living in and writing in Canada: “There is no Canadian theatre, in the sense that there is an Irish theatre and a Russian theatre and a Swedish theatre.”50 It is clear that, unlike

Canada, other countries hold the possibility for a professional theatre career as well as a national theatre style and character. The fame that potentially accompanies a professional career in theatre was also not a possibility in Canada; any possible notoriety is inherently ‘local.’51 While the common image of professional theatre was foreign, the frequency of visits by touring productions was decreasing. In a 1924 Globe article, the lack of touring companies and increased activity of local theatre is discussed:

The refusal of New York managers to send their successes on the road under present high travelling costs has resulted in many ‘dark’ weeks in local high-priced theatres which have been mainly dependent on imported companies. Absence of these visitors has been a blessing in disguise to many local people with stage inclinations. The gaps have been

49 Farmer 44. 50 Farmer 44. 51 Hart House Theatre is “[r]egarded as a purely local achievement” (Denison 66). 49

filled often by amateur productions, including melodrama, comedy, farce, grand opera, light opera and musical comedy.52 While these local companies are obviously serving the same function as the professional touring companies had, filling in the “gaps” left by the decline of the road, they are still considered amateur. The article continues: “Less than three years ago the idea of a Canadian drama scarcely existed and was the subject for unseemly laughter.” Though less laughable, Canadian theatre remains synonymous with amateur theatre during this decade, and theatre from abroad is assumed to be professional.

One of many reasons theatrical professionalism was viewed as existing only outside

Canada was that there were no official theatre training or educational facilities until the 1940s.

Aspiring professionals had to go abroad for training, becoming a part of that country’s professional theatre field in the process. Thus, gaining theatrical training signified professional and foreign, the latter also signifying and reinforcing the label of professional. Vincent Massey, in “The Prospects of a Canadian Drama,” advocates for a combination of a broad education and technical training for professionals; “the only sound foundation of any professional career is an education in the humanities. Once the mind has been liberally endowed and thoroughly trained, then the formulae, the rules of thumb, the tricks of the trade, whether it be law, journalism, or the theatre, can be acquired.”53 It did not matter what societal or communal function the amateur theatres were fulfilling: they lacked the training and skills viewed as vital to a professional theatre career. In a 1928 article in Canadian Forum entitled “What About Little Theatres?”,

Dorothy G. Taylor quotes from Carroll Aikins: “One of the commoner defects in amateur production, according to Mr. Aikins, is ‘the inability of non-professional players to reproduce effects with anything like consistent accuracy… The occasional player represents in his own

52 “A Bystander At The Office Window” 5. 53 Massey 58. 50 person, highly incalculable material from which to make a transcript of the play’s intentions’.”54

Taylor herself does not entirely seem to agree with this assessment, and names certain individuals in the Ontario non-professional theatre community - such as Grace Webster (actor) and Merrill Denison (playwright) - as being particularly talented and knowledgeable. She also notes that the early days of the Little Theatre Movement involved a lot of ambition in terms of technical skills, and “the importance of technique was recognized by the earnest workers whose aim it was to bring to the minds of the playgoing public of their community the highest ideals of the drama. They talked eagerly of the superiority of drapes over conventional ‘scenery’; they hinted at the aesthetic value of the spoken drama as a means of expression.”55 Many amateur companies during the 1920s began undertaking their own skills acquisition. The result was that while quality of work and skill on display were not enough to designate a company as professional, poor quality and poor technique were still frequently sufficient signifiers of

‘amateur.’ Even though critics were aware professional theatre could be low quality (as reviews from this period clearly demonstrate), ‘professional’ remained a short-hand adjective meaning

‘high-quality.’ This contradiction presented a problem of terminology for critics attempting to praise work of companies and individuals that, by all other marks, would be considered amateur.

This is frequently seen in criticism of Hart House Theatre and its players: Denison wrote that

“one feels that [Hart House Theatre] is of great value as a training school for acting. A capable and sincere company has been formed which is assuredly non-professional rather than amateur.

The manner of production, however, [sic] one may object to the interpretation or the choice of play, is always capable and is always free from the faults which make so many amateur dramatic

54 Taylor 42. 55 Taylor 42. 51 efforts ridiculous.”56 Rather than completely abandoning ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ as adjectives to describe quality, he turns to the less loaded ‘non-professional’ to avoid insulting

Hart House’s production by labelling it ‘amateur’ in status and quality. Another solution, also on display in this quotation from Denison, was to refer to the amateur company as a ‘training school’ allowing it to live in the liminal space between amateur and professional; this label would be seen increasingly in the 1930s and 40s, as non-professional theatre often did function as a training ground for radio performers and for the first professional Canadian companies.

While most professional signifiers position the professional as superior to amateurism, a few of the commonly found signifiers specific to early-twentieth century Canada – and particularly Ontario - indicate amateur theatre practitioners were in some ways considered more admirable than professionals. There were competing assumptions being made: amateur theatre productions are derivative and professional ones are innovative, which co-existed with the idea that amateur theatres (particularly the Little Theatres) are the ones experimenting while the professional/commercial theatres are scared of taking risks. These competing assumptions can even be found within the same piece of writing about the same theatre company. Denison, in the piece of writing cited above, chastises Hart House for not being more artistically innovative.

“These experiments must be carried on,” he writes;

The insatiable desire for progress that marks a developing art demands it and Hart House is the only place on the continent where they can be carried out. It has the opportunity to contribute something, be it ever so little, to the world, by honest, fearless craftsmanship, and yet it has been satisfied for two years to confine itself to the competition with the uptown and downtown stock companies.57

Hart House is not compared here to other amateur theatres, but to professional stock companies; it is implied here that those commercial theatres are expected not to take risks, while more lofty

56 Denison 67. 57 Denison 68. 52 experiments are expected from Hart House Theatre. While American theatre set the commercial association for professional theatre, especially touring theatre, the Provincetown Players, Theatre

Guild and other American Little Theatres set the precedent for artistic innovation and excellence among similar non-professional companies. Even if Denison criticizes it for falling short of this precedent, Hart House is still praised for the risks it does take over and above its professional counterparts such as its production of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, “a show few professional companies would dare attempt.”58 Of course, Hart House was not your average amateur theatre and expectations were higher for it than for other amateur groups. Herman Voaden, in numerous articles, complains that Canadian theatre on the whole was too derivative and lacked artistic innovation; he accuses the Little Theatres in particular of producing little but “dull literalism” onstage.

Likewise, there were competing assumptions about professional theatre’s innovations or lack thereof, specifically in its relation to commercial theatre. While “professional” carries with it the association with “competence,” the associations are less positive for “commercial”; many of the worst qualities of the subpar professional touring productions sent to Ontario during the

1920s were, in the media, blamed on their commercial nature. When it was poorly received, the professional theatre was often conflated with highly commercial theatre; this conflation was reinforced because many of the subpar touring productions came from America, whose theatre industry was seen as being more commercial than Britain’s. As the 1920s wore on, more and more theatre critics complained that professional touring companies were sending sub-par shows, and thus the frustration with commercial theatre grew.

The mixed connotations carried by ‘experimental’ and ‘artistic innovation’ prevent them from being clear signifiers when differentiating ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ during this time

58 Denison 65. 53 period. However, they are useful labels to consider when making distinctions within each of those categories. They often signified the difference between ‘professional’ and ‘commercial’; within the amateur sphere, these terms could mean the difference between the Little Theatres a and groups formed solely for social pleasure. This second category of amateur theatre, particularly the Little Theatres, was seen as an antidote to highly commercial theatre in a way that non-commercial professional theatre rarely was. Critic Lawrence Mason named the Sarnia

Drama League as a particularly strong example of a company that avoids the common pitfalls of both the commercial theatre and the amateur theatre: “The Sarnia Idea, then, is not the presentation of ‘amateur theatricals’ for profit or just for fun, as a pastime. It aims at remedying the drawbacks in the existing theatre situation, so far as professional companies and ‘the road’ are concerned; and beyond that, it aims at forwarding a National movement with deeply important implication.”59 This sentiment, that the Little Theatres were the answer to the frustrations of commercial theatre, would only increase in the 1930s and would shape many of the most prevalent models for a professional Canadian theatre.

The different categories of amateur theatres found in early-twentieth century Ontario could also be divided based on perceived time spent on their craft. Amateurs generally participate in theatre as a hobby or as a social activity in their hours off from their main profession or occupation. The more active, devoted and innovative amateur theatres of the

1920s- 30s were often referred to as ‘non-professional’ or ‘training grounds’ rather than

‘amateur’ not only because of the quality of their work, but also because of the increased hours spent. In a 1921 Canadian Forum article on these types of high-quality amateur theatres, R.

Keith Hicks writes that “[t]he new dramatics are a serious effort, not by individual stars but by co-operative groups. Gone are the days of ‘amateur theatricals’ - the modern player squirms at

59 Mason “The Sarnia Idea” 73. 54 the word - driven to limbo by the energy of the working troupe that makes its own scenery and costumes.”60 Both the “modern player” and the media hesitate to label these theatre groups simply as “amateur”; their work showed evidence of a large time commitment from their company members, and the companies themselves had usually gained respect through the longevity of their existence and regularity of their activity. The sentiment, of respect gained through time spent practicing, could be extended to years of existing. Hart House Theatre is an example of a theatre that, by producing consistently strong work over the course of many years, increased their validity as an institution:

[soon] the players of Hart House Theatre will be acting in their one hundredth production, thus attaining a goal of no mean achievement in the annals of Canadian amateur theatricals. […] there are names that stand out on those play-bills, names of actors and actresses who took their first call at Hart House and have since distinguished themselves on the legitimate stage. Hart House may almost call itself an institution; it has achieved a past.61

This writer implies that longevity, that having ‘a past,’ is necessary for legitimacy, and legitimacy lends itself more to professionalism than to amateurism (one hundred productions is implied to be an unusual achievement for an amateur company). However, Hart House Theatre in this article is still considered a stepping-stone rather than “the legitimate stage.” But it is “an institution” and so is set apart from other amateur theatres.

Those amateur groups that did practice only in their spare time, as a hobby or social activity, were often viewed by critics as having a lack of regard for their audience or their finished product. This is an example of the common association with amateurism, that amateurs prioritized their personal enjoyment over their patrons’. Self-indulgence was often used as a

60 Hicks “The Community Theatre” 309. 61 “Little Theatres” 118. 55 signifier for amateur theatre groups during this period; this, in addition to the commonly held notion that amateurs lack in skill, led many to avoid seeing amateur shows altogether:

Some theatregoers would rather be boiled in oil than sit through an amateur production. It is not so certain whether the players care about this. If they can pay expenses they do not mind the scorn of these critics. No doubt they are having just as good a time as the audience, if not better.62

Even the most positive of signifiers - that amateurs enjoy their activities - could result in a negative connotation for the term. While amateur theatre in 1920s Ontario was seen to have merit, many of the commonly found signifiers of amateurism in the media were fairly traditional, even stereotypical.

Many of the professionalism and amateurism signifiers found in the media’s theatrical discourse of the 1920s are fairly standard conceptions, falling in line with the broadly-applicable definitions of a “profession” outlined earlier in this chapter. Training and competence in theatrical skills were signs of professionalism, while a lack of training and incompetence were seen as amateur. Length and regularity of practice usually signified professionalism, and amongst amateurs these helped to divide the ambitious, skilled amateurs from the casual, social drama groups. Other characteristics of a “profession” were not yet applicable in the 1920s, due to the absence of a professional Canadian theatre field; while receiving financial remunerations or belonging to a union certainly signified professionalism, these were rarely discussed in the media because the professionals seen in Ontario cities were contracted and paid within the infrastructures of foreign professional fields. Thus, most common signifiers of professionalism were wrapped up in the easy distinction that ‘foreign’ meant ‘professional’ and ‘local’ meant

‘amateur.’

62 “A Bystander At The Office Window” 5. 56

The most widely discussed signifiers of professional and amateurism in 1920s theatre were, of course, those characteristics of each that critics saw most often. Venue and size of audience clearly denoted whether a production was professional or amateur. Amateurs’ love of the process of theatre-making often resulted in self-indulgent work that disregarded the audience’s enjoyment; however, their value of process over product and the general distaste among Canadians for the prevalence of American culture also led to the association of amateur theatre with anti-commercial artistic ideals. The Little Theatres in particular were viewed in the media as the potential refreshing alternative to all the commercial American touring productions being shipped to Ontario. Artistic innovation was not necessarily an indicator of solely professionalism or amateurism, but it was used to make distinctions within each category based on artistic integrity; commercial professional theatres were seen as just as derivative as many less ambitious amateur groups, while the Little Theatres and certain types of professional theatres

(the classical repertory model, for example) were more concerned with artistry.

The Process of Professionalization

“We are the only country in the world where television came before theatre”

- Wilbert Lloyd Roberts, Director of Cwmni Theatr Cymru, Wales, 197463

The process by which an occupation becomes a profession can be described in a number of ways. It can be defined by its completion, which occurs when there is an agreement amongst practitioners, clients/consumers, and the general public that the occupation meets the definition of a profession. Its completion can also be defined by a monopoly; Leicht and Fennell, in 2001’s

Professional work: a Sociological Approach, write that an “occupation is professionalized to the

63 Quoted in Stephens 239. 57 extent that it successfully defines a set of work tasks as their exclusive domain, and successfully defends that domain against competing claims.”64 Part of defending the exclusivity of your profession’s domain is making sure the public and potential clients value your field’s specialized skills over others who could potentially complete the same ‘work tasks’ with less training, fewer qualifications, and/or non-standardized rates of remunerations. Similarly, Herbert Blumer defines professionalization by its goals, which he states are “to clothe a given area with standards of excellence, to establish rules of conduct, to develop a sense of responsibility, to set criteria for recruitment and training, to ensure a measure of protection for members, to establish collective control over the area, and to elevate it to a position of dignity and social standing in society.”65

The process can therefore be defined not necessarily by its conclusion, but by its intentions and trajectory. Goode posits that the process of professionalization begins just as the characteristics of a community begin to appear; “as the profession comes into being, or as an occupation begins to approach the pole of professionalism, it begins to take on the traits of a community.”66 His chronological ordering either does not assume the possibility of an amateur community that transforms into a profession, or he sees professionalization as inevitably creating a new community rather than potentially transforming a pre-existent one. Either way, professionalization is closely tied to the development or pre-existence of the characteristics of a community.

Theodore Caplow, in Professionalization, broadly defines the process as a series of steps frequently noted in professions as they come into being:

The first step [of professionalization] is the establishment of a professional association, with definite membership criteria designed to keep out the unqualified.

64 Leicht and Fennell 8. 65 Blumer xi. 66 Goode 153-54. 58

The second step is the change of name which serves the multiple functions of reducing identification with the previous occupational status, asserting a technological monopoly, and providing a title which can be monopolized [...].

The third step is the development and promulgation of a code of ethics which asserts the social utility of the occupation, sets up public welfare rationale, and develops rules which serve as further criteria to eliminate the unqualified and unscrupulous. [...]

The fourth step is a prolonged political agitation, whose object it is to obtain the support of the public power for the maintenance of the new occupational barriers. […]

Concurrently with this activity, which may extend over a very long period of time, goes the development of training facilities directly or indirectly controlled by the professional society […] and the establishment - after conflict - of working relations with related professional groups.67

Again, achieving the “monopoly of expertise” is noted as a vital milestone in the process. As for

Caplow’s other steps in the professionalization process, some are more easily applied to theatre than others. A general terminology or name change of the entire profession is not usually seen in theatre as it professionalizes, but frequently individual companies and institutions do change their name and brand when becoming professional. He also brings up political agitation as a part of the process; as the other aspects of professionalization take place, some form of government recognition or support is usually demanded. For theatre, this takes the form of state patronage - the formation of a council that offers grants, and/or the creation of a few token companies or institutions that are almost entirely government funded. In Canada, we will see, the conversation surrounding the possibility of government funding for theatre is very much tied to the professionalization discourse.

Because most sociological studies on professions do not include theatre or other artistic fields, the most useful sources of information on the professionalization process are historical case studies of professional theatre fields elsewhere - in particular nations like Canada where the

67 Caplow 20-21. 59 process occurred relatively late, in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Frame’s study of

Russian theatre’s professionalization, already cited in this study, is valuable to this dissertation largely for its broad yet succinct definition of professions; the Russian theatre bears little resemblance to the theatre in twentieth century Ontario or that found elsewhere in Canada.

Adrienne Scullion’s article, “Scottish theatre and the impact of radio” provides insight into a more similar professionalization process. Scullion recounts the growth of amateur theatre alongside the increasingly professional radio industry during the interwar period in Scotland and how Scottish broadcasters drew from that amateur community as they had no direct access to professional theatrical or performance fields. The early regional radio broadcast system, established in the 1920s, was later swallowed by national radio, “but in Scotland … the foundations for the programming distinctive to that of other stations was established as a base for actors, writers and producers who, with experience gained within the contemporary amateur theatre scene and from broadcasting within the increasingly professionalized operations of the

BBC, would influence the professional theatre which developed in Scotland after World War

II.”68 The Scottish example offers many parallels to Ontario, which also saw the quick rise of a national professional radio while local theatre remained an almost entirely amateur pursuit.

Television, radio, and film uniquely challenged nations whose theatre fields professionalized in the mid-twentieth century; the perceived need for a professional theatre is lessened by a competing form of artistic entertainment. On the other hand, the professionalization of these adjacent mediums helped the process in theatre by establishing training for related skills and by raising the profile of practitioners who could operate in more than one field (such actors and writers). Many Scottish theatre writers and performers who were participating in the

“increasingly professionalized” radio world began to think of themselves as professional and

68 Scullion 118. 60 began to view their skills as specialized and valued. After WWII, the groundwork had been laid to professionalize Scottish theatre as well.

Like Scotland, Wales too was dominated by English theatre, bore a vibrant amateur theatre community, and did not have its own professional theatre industry until the mid-twentieth century. Claire Cochrane’s “The Contaminated Audience” provides a practical historiographical framework through which to analyze histories other theatre fields and communities that remained amateur until the twentieth century, since most theatre histories do not value amateur dramatics.

She describes how “‘[r]eal’ theatre in Wales only begins to emerge in the 1960s with more sustained and state-funded attempts to stabilize professional initiative.”69 Before that point, there were a few professional theatre ventures, but they were often not sufficiently patronized by audiences whose entertainment and cultural needs were being met by their local community theatres. This pattern of unsupported professional companies in Wales, which persisted for many decades in the early-to-mid twentieth century is a clear example of why professionals often fear amateurs: when the public is not yet conditioned to view amateurs as incompetent then the amateurs become direct and less expensive competition for the professionals. Yet, even in a cultures in which amateur theatre dominated for lengthy periods, the professionalization of that field resulted in a relative absence of amateur theatre from the historical record. Cochrane’s description of the difficulty with researching amateur theatre in Wales and the problems with assigning historical ‘firsts’ or ‘beginnings’ in theatre illuminates how historical accounts indicate the professionalization process has been completed while only recounting the end results of that process. “Where art displeases the dominant voice of the critic-historian chooses silence”:70 the effect of dominant aesthetic tastes on record-keeping often leads to the erasure of amateur

69 Cochrane “Contaminated” 170. 70 Cochrane “Pervasiveness” 233. 61 activity from theatre history, designating it as “not-theatre.”71 Elan Closs Stephens writes that

“[i]f there exists an official, unwritten history of Welsh theatre it dates the terminus a quo of

‘proper’ Welsh theatre in the early sixties with the founding of the Welsh Theatre Company.”72

As Cochrane’s article and the example of Wales shows us, because the amateur histories are less valued and professionalism is seen as a “beginning” of a nation’s theatre there is frequently a lack of continuity or influence between amateur and professional in theatre history narratives, and the early stages of the professionalization process are not recounted; this is a gap this study seeks to fill for Ontario’s theatre history.

Professionalization in Other Canadian Artistic Fields

The professionalization of other artistic fields in Canada that become open to artists in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century allowed for employment and the development of certain skills that would overlap with the theatre. When a field like theatre is seeking to undergo the professionalization process, related professions with similar specialized skills can often help increase the value of those skills for both.

The visual arts in Canada displayed many steps towards professionalization in the late nineteenth century, especially in Ontario. The Ontario Society of Artists, a professional association, was established in 1872 and within ten years it had opened branches of the Ontario

School of Art in Toronto, London, and Ottawa, increasing the profession’s control of its membership and its specialized knowledge and training. The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was established in 1880, as was the National Gallery of Canada. In Rethinking Professionalism,

Huneault refers to “the first wave of cultural professionalization in Canada” in the late nineteenth

71 Cochrane “Contaminated” 170. 72 Stephens 240. 62 century as applying to the visual arts rather than other artistic mediums;73 until the mid-to-late twentieth century, the government’s main interest in funding the arts lay in “painting, sculpture, and the building up of a national collection in these and related areas.”74 The main results of the government’s patronage of the visual arts are the aforementioned National Gallery of Canada and its collection, which consisted during the Gallery’s early years mainly of purchases made by the government.

The visual arts were one of the first artistic mediums in Canada to establish professional associations and formal training facilities, as well as being one of the first to receive financial support from the government; most of the other artistic fields underwent the professionalization process in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Poetry and fiction were very active throughout the nineteenth century but received far less support from the government than did the visual arts;

“[w]riters were at the bottom of the heap; they were of little practical value to governments, so they and their boosters were reduced to pleading for pensions or sinecures.”75 Like theatre, literature in Canada was at first dominated by British and American works and styles.

McClelland & Stewart Inc, a Canadian book publishing company founded in 1906, would eventually publish the works of many renowned Canadian authors; however, in the first half of the twentieth century it served the function of supplying libraries with books from other nations.

The field’s first professional association, the Canadian Authors’ Association (CAA), was founded in 1921; notably, one of the CAA’s founders was editor B.K. Sandwell, also a frequent contributor to the public discourse on Canadian theatre. The CAA was designed to organize, benefit, and lobby on behalf of its members; one of its earliest and longest battles was to “to

73 Huneault and Anderson “Introduction” 11. 74 Tippet 81. 75 Vance 344. 63 secure more favourable copyright legislation for Canadian writers.”76 The Association also helped to build a readership for its members’ work by publicly encouraging Canadians to buy

Canadian books, thereby increasing societal value placed on the field’s goods and skills. The

CAA successfully ensured an increase in exclusivity in the field by offering most of its benefits to white male authors living in central Canada; however, in some ways it strongly resembled more casual amateur associations, as it was often used as a means of socializing rather than professional development. Regarding the Association’s place in the history of poetry in Canada,

Lorraine York writes, “the CAA often figure[d] as a symbol of mediocrity and mindless national boosterism”, even to its members.77 This notion figures prominently in F.R. Scott’s infamous poem about the CAA, in which he states “Miss Crotchett’s muse has somehow failed to function

/ Yet she’s a poetess.”78 Apart from his implicit critique of the feminization of poetry, Scott also seems to be annoyed at the organization not being exclusive enough to ensure the barring of 'bad' poets. Despite its perceived mixed success, the CAA’s existence indicates Canadian literature was by 1921 more motivated and organized towards gaining professionalism signifiers than was the theatre. There was also the founding of Canadian Bookman in 1919, a periodical that aimed to encourage the literary culture in Canada through the publication of literature criticism, reviews, and articles on book selling. Specialized publications are often used as a means of legitimizing a professionalizing field by critically examining it, increasing the common knowledge shared amongst its members, and recording its history. Bookman is an example of a development in literature benefiting related fields, as the periodical occasionally featured articles on the Canadian theatre. Vance, in A History of Canadian Culture, refers to this period of the late

1910s to early 1920s as a “cultural renaissance” for Canadian literature,

76 Vance 243-44. 77 York 160. 78 Quoted in York 160. 64

championed by people such as Gordon Thompson, who founded the Authors and Composers Association of Canada in 1918 to protect and promote the rights of songwriters. In book publishing, there were boosters like Hugh Eayrs, a charismatic Englishman who became president of Macmillan of Canada at the tender age of twenty- six and almost immediately changed the company’s policy of doing only textbooks in Canada. Eayrs diverted some of the profits from educational sales to publish some of Canada’s most important authors[.]79

Within Canadian literature and fiction, poetry was one of the most successful forms during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; many called it the “supreme art” of this period,80 and its cultural capital helped to increase the prestige of the rest of the field. Later in the twentieth century, Canadian writers gained further professional associations and representation: the League of Canadian Poets was founded in 1966, and then the Writers’ Union of Canada was founded in

1973. Though Canadian literature was organized and active quite early, it received less government patronage than did the visual arts and so its professionalization process stretched over a longer period of time.

In contrast to Canadian literature’s development was that of the radio. As a new medium, radio content and broadcasting was a rare profession in which Canada did not find itself centuries behind its cultural influences. The medium only arrived in Canada at the end of WWI; the first station was the WXA in Montreal, established by the Marconi Telegraph Company.81

The government was highly involved with the patronage and licensing of radio from the very beginning; the WXA received an official government license to operate regularly in 1919

(becoming the CFCF in the process), and in 1923 federal legislation “stipulated that only British subjects could apply for broadcasting licenses, to prevent Canadian radio from falling into the

79 Vance 244-45. 80 Daniels 193, 201. 81 Vance 351. 65 hands of U.S. interests.”82 As extreme and colonially-minded as this legislation may seem, the success of Canadian radio would become a major force against the domination of American culture and business. Broadcasts included a mixture of music and concerts, news, talk shows, and radio drama. Many early radio dramas came out of the amateur theatre community, just as radio concerts were another platform for the amateur music community. With government licensing being necessary to broadcast, radio began as an already exclusive occupation in which to participate; even still, there was room for amateurs in many radio programs. In the 1920s and early 30s, the realm of radio drama in Canada was inextricably tied to amateur theatre groups:

The Murray Players of New Brunswick (1925) performed the first full-length Canadian radio drama, The Rosary, over the Canadian National Railways’ station in Moncton in 1925. A year later the railway’s Vancouver station organized the CNRV Players, thereby giving its announcer the opportunity to ask his listeners every Friday evening at 9:00 PM to ‘turn down the lights, pull your chairs up close to the radio, and refrain from unnecessary conversation’ in preparation for the performance. Between 1927 and 1932 the CNRV Players performed over one hundred full-length dramas.83

While radio broadcasting in Canada was professionalizing rapidly, the creation of radio drama was the realm of amateurs for a time. Jack Gillmore, director of the Murray Players, writes that none of their actors were paid for performing in these radio plays: “The thrill of being on radio was sufficient inducement for all of the participants.”84 The professionalization of both theatre and radio drama progressed throughout the next several decades, with the radio receiving more support from the Canadian government and the theatre community providing experienced actors and writers for the radio. Tippet in Making Culture writes, “state involvement in radio … created a place for the growing number of writers, dramatists, actors, and musicians the country was

82 Vance 351-32. 83 Tippet 14. 84 Quoted in Tippet 14. 66 producing”;85 while this one stream of funding was not an adequate replacement for government funding of the arts at large, it did allow professionals and aspiring professionals from other fields a structured outlet and an audience for their talent. The radio also boosted the profile of many of those theatre artists, allowing them to gain more notice for their work in the theatre. By the

1940s, many theatre practitioners were receiving training and experience in the amateur and early professional theatres of Ontario while supporting themselves financially with radio engagements.

The Association for Canadian Radio Artists was founded in 1943, acting as a professional association for the relatively new field. Training in radio was also established in the 1940s; in

Toronto, these educational facilities included “Edgar Stone’s early Radio Hall, Lorne Green’s

Academy of Radio Arts, Ben Lennick’s School of the Theatre, and later Sterndale Bennett’s

Canadian Theatre School and Marjorie Purvey’s Toronto School of Radio […]. Queen’s

University, the University of Toronto, and Ryerson also had radio training activities.”86 N. Alice

Frick, in her history of CBC radio drama from 1944-1954, describes the production process and pay rates in the early days of professional radio drama; script-writers and voice actors were paid and new radio plays were produced on a regular basis with a quickly established weekly routine.

Writers submitted scripts from all over the country and from all variety of disciplines (some were playwrights, yes, but few that had had their work produced before in Canada). Once CBC Radio put out the call for radio plays for their Stages programme, the ample response kept their script readers busy. There seemed to be writers in Canada who were already getting their scripts bought for radio in the U.S., but according to Frick many of them started selling their scripts to the CBC instead once that was feasible:

85 Tippet 80. 86 Scott 65, note 143. 67

I sometimes wondered why our writers persisted in sending their plays to us instead of trying for the more lucrative U.S. Network shows. The answer I got from all writers with whom I discussed the question was simply that the larger fees could not compensate for the gagging imposed by taboos on themes and subject matter. […] The writers represented on the Stages and other CBC programmes valued the opportunity to explore and develop dramatic themes with no limitations save those of radio transmission itself.87

Standard payment rates were set early: “Script payments for Stage 44 were set at a higher rate than fees regularly paid, and were negotiated for one performance on a specified date, at $200 per performance.”88 As well, CBC Radio Drama immediately cultivated habits typical of the

‘professions’ by developing specific etiquette. Frick writes that “[n]o matter how well we knew each other personally, we always addressed each other in rehearsal as Mr This and Miss That: it helped to remind us of the exacting job we were doing. It prevented us from presuming on one another, and advanced the cause of both author and audience.”89 The use of actors from the

Ontario theatre community only increased in the post-WWI era; Christopher Plummer and

William Shatner were early and regular radio performers, both having also performed with the

Canadian Repertory Theatre and other contemporary companies. John Drainie and John Colicos, as well, were staples of the Ontario and English-Quebec theatre scenes before radio provided more ample opportunities. Throughout the 1940s, many of Dora Mavor Moore’s frequent cast members (from the Village Players and then the New Play Society) became regulars at the CBC

Radio, especially for their Stage series: the “exchange of performers back and forth between the radio and Dora’s Village Players had been going on for years, and would continue,”90 with supervisors for CBC radio drama often discovering new talent in Moore’s productions.

87 Frick 21. 88 Frick 26-27. 89 Quoted in Frick, 24. 90 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 144. 68

From these examples of the professionalization of other artistic fields in Canada, we can see how much financial capital and government support affect the rapidity of the process. The funding of these fields allowed practitioners to concentrate on developing field dynamics and non-monetary professionalism signifiers, rather than focusing on anxiety over audience numbers.

While both the visual and literary arts were popular in Canada in the nineteenth century, the visual arts received more government funds and were more quickly able to establish professional associations and training facilities. Beyond finances, the support of the government in law- making and regulations appears vital to the professionalization process and the establishment of a monopoly of skills and services.

Conclusion

Theatre is an atypical profession, usually absent from studies of professions and professionalization; however, components of those studies can be applied when they are adapted to the flexibility and permeable boundaries found in a field of cultural production. The division between professional and amateur must be re-conceptualized for the theatre profession; there are productive, non-binary modes of thinking of professional and amateur - such as a spectrum or as collections of signifiers - that more accurately reflect Canadian theatre of the early-twentieth century. These modes of thinking allow for the individuals, companies, and communities that often possess signifiers of both professional and amateur concurrently.

As we move into the next chapter, the concept of a professional field and its interconnected agents and dynamics will help us understand the difficulties Canada had in revitalizing the pre-war professional theatre industry in which it had been a passive participant.

The British and U.S. professional theatre fields had been designed to encompass but cede no 69 control to Canada, making it difficult for Canadians to create their own post-war professional ventures in the pre-war style. As we will see in examining the 1920s theatrical landscape, professional signifiers were still very much influenced by foreign pre-war professional theatre models; though critics, artists, and audiences were becoming dissatisfied with those older models, they had not yet been replaced with anything new. However, the frustrations that surfaced out of the post-WWI theatre would shape the most prevalent models for a professional

Canadian theatre that would emerge in the 1930s. 70

Chapter 2: Towards a New Model of Professionalism

Between 1919 and 1929, a shift occurred in Ontario’s theatrical paradigm. During this period, foreign and Canadian businessmen attempted to restore pre-war professional theatre models; from these failed attempts came a burgeoning desire to create a professional Canadian theatre. There was at least one significant Canadian attempt during the 1920s to revitalize theatrical touring (the Trans-Canada Theatre Organization) and numerous attempts by American and British businessmen to form permanent stock companies in Toronto. Most of these attempts lasted only a couple seasons, and none of them were still operational by the dawn of the 1930s.

As it turned out, the professional theatre fields of Great Britain and the U.S. had loosened their grip on Canada enough for Canadians to notice a lack, but there remained enough infrastructure from those fields that Canadians found great difficulty trying to compensate. This failure to revitalize pre-WWI models of theatrical professionalism was followed by an increasing interest in a Canadian professional theatre in the media and the theatre community. This interest was also fuelled by a newfound increase in patriotism; Merrill Denison observed that a “belief in the possibility, or desirability, of a Canadian drama […] seems to have sprung partly from the national consciousness born of the war.”91 In the daily newspapers and arts magazines, a discourse began to materialize at the dawn of the 1930s from this interest in a professional

Canadian theatre. Common models would begin to emerge for what a professional Canadian theatre would look like, and the newfound distrust in pre-war professional models meant a divergence from them. Some of the post-WWI permanent stock theatre companies that arose and then quickly disappeared were technically Canadian, in that they were physically located in

Canada and some were founded by Canadian businessmen. However, they are not included in

91 Denison 89. 71 most historical accounts of Canadian professional theatre because they did not lead directly or immediately to a professional industry, nor were they – as bastions of older professional models - aesthetically or politically noteworthy. These were distinctly commercial ventures and in the wake of the post-war changes to the theatrical landscape, the public perception of ‘commercial theatre’ was changing for the worse. Ontario audiences with access to touring venues prior to

WWI had been exposed to highly-commercial professional theatre for decades, but the quality and quantity of commercial fare dropped noticeably as the touring system deteriorated. The

1920s’ renewed attempts at commercial theatre, even if they represented an attempt to return to a pre-war industry standard, become increasingly easy to dismiss with the flaws of the past rather than clearly being the start of something new.

Early attempts at replacing the touring system

When looking at theatre in Ontario cities during the 1920s, especially Toronto, it is difficult to determine the exact level of professional activity that remained or when the touring system’s diminishment was accepted as a commonly acknowledged fact. Modern accounts paint very different pictures: while Scott92 insists that during the 1920s “the city [Toronto] found it difficult to support more than one permanent company at a time,” Robert G. Lawrence93 describes the opposite, stating that “[t]he stock-company phenomenon was particularly vigorous in Toronto because, with a population of about 500,000 in the mid 1920s, it was capable of supporting as many as eleven playhouses, including three legitimate theatres (dominated by touring companies), four or five vaudeville/burlesque houses, and a varying number of repertory theatres.” It could be argued that Lawrence is referring solely to venues and not the ‘permanent

92 Scott 39. 93 Lawrence. 72 companies’ that Scott specifies. Taking that into consideration, each description gives a very different impression of Toronto’s theatrical life. Even from period accounts of Toronto’s theatre landscape, it is difficult to gain a consistent impression. A 1927 Globe writer in “Compromise or

The Ideal?” calls Toronto the “music and drama capitol [sic] of Canada”, and emphasizes that

“[i]mportant premieres take place here. Matheson Lang, D’Oyly Carte, and other English companies play here without visiting the States.”94 Articles encouraging Toronto to embrace itself as a ’cultural capital’ were common, while in many other pieces the writers bemoaned a lack of quality entertainment. A 1925 article offers an apt summary of this contradiction; the author boasts of an “astonishing wealth in Toronto of theatrical enterprises” and “the presence of four stock companies”, while lamenting that this host of theatrical activity “is perhaps hardly realized by the average citizen.”95 The city could be seen as a ‘cultural capital’ while still representing untapped theatrical potential and disengaged audiences. In Ontario and across

Canada, some businessmen saw an underserved theatrical market and an opportunity to move in where touring companies had not picked up again after the war.

Trans-Canada Theatre Organization

The Trans-Canada Theatre Organization sought to continue the traditions of the touring system while combatting aspects of that system that frustrated audiences and critics. One of these frustrations was the lack of British touring productions booked for Canadian venues, since these bookings had previously been the domain of American booking agents. This control by the

American syndicates limited the touring of English productions in Canada. When the Trans-

Canada Theatre Organization was created in 1919, it was following in the footsteps of the

94 “Compromise or The Ideal?” 20. 95 “A National Drama for Canada” 7. 73 defunct British Canadian Theatre Organization Society of the 1910s which “proposed the establishment of a chain of theatres across Canada so that English stars and companies could profitably tour through the Dominion”96 without interference from the American syndicates. The

Trans-Canada Theatre Organization bought up theatrical venues across the country and solicited

British productions to tour Canada. Not everyone saw this as an improvement over the old touring system: Vincent Massey complained that “[t]he only reaction against this domination of

Broadway is the ‘Trans-Canada Theatre’ scheme to bring out English companies for Canadian tours. This plan, however, seems not unconnected with an all-British propaganda.”97 The organization was founded by “a consortium of Canadian and British businessmen,”98 mostly affiliated with the railway business rather than the theatre industry. While in the first year of its existence it appeared to be a popular and financial success, the organization was dissolved by

October of 1923. There are many possible reasons for this, the foremost being the difficult task of finding enough productions to fill the 125 theatrical venues the organization had purchased; unsurprisingly, there was little cooperation from the American booking agents. The American theatre industry’s monopoly could not be overcome – its productions were absolutely necessary to fill scheduling gaps, as sufficient British productions could not be secured. New Canadian productions of popular British productions were not programming options, as the North

American rights to these plays belonged to the uncooperative New York syndicates. As far back as 1914, Sandwell had called for “the abolition of selling the Canadian rights along with the

American rights to the same New York producer,”99 but the problem persisted into the 1920s and plagued the Trans-Canada Organization. The field of professional American theatre had

96 O’Neill 59. 97 Massey 53. 98 Scott 31. 99 Sandwell 19. 74 developed in such a way that its monopoly domain extended into Canada. By attempting to emulate a familiar professional theatre model, the Trans-Canada organization found the

American field an obstacle by its design.

The productions the Trans-Canada organization did secure proved unsatisfactory to

Canadian audiences and critics. While the organization claimed to deliver productions desired by audiences, amateur theatres were increasingly better at catering to the tastes of their communities. The plays of George Bernard Shaw, for example, proved extremely popular among amateur theatres and their audiences; the Trans-Canada organization, however, either did not take note of this or failed to secure play rights or existing Shaw productions for its venues.100 The organization’s failure could also be blamed on the low quality of productions it had to book to fill its theatres: “Little good will come of the substitution of one form of mediocrity for another.

We may hate the product of Broadway, but if it is to be replaced by English importations, let it be only by the best that England can give us.”101 Audiences and critics proved that a production’s resemblance to pre-war professional theatre was not sufficient reason to attend and, as such, the

Trans-Canada Organization suffered in reviews and at the box office. While this venture may have been attempting to fill a gap left by the reduced touring system, it proved a difficult task hampered by its immense scope, uncooperative American booking agents taught to see Canada as part of the American theatre field, and waning box office interest in the only type of productions the organization was able to provide.

The Trans-Canada Theatre Organization represented a pre-war, touring-based professional theatre model; it counted on the public’s enduring preference for old professional models and attempted to make use of the remaining infrastructure of ‘the road.’ Had it

100 O’Neill 63. 101 Massey 53. 75 succeeded, the Trans-Canada Organization and any professional theatres born in its image would have essentially attached themselves to the British professional theatre field and would have prioritized employing Canadian venue managers and booking agents over Canadian actors, directors, and playwrights. Its goal was to allow Canadian businessmen to wrest control of

Canadian venues from the American syndicates, but not to disrupt the U.S.’s continuing cultural influence. It is difficult to say what other effects the organization might have had on the process of Canadian theatre professionalization had it survived longer. It may have prevented the process and continued to reinforce the dominance on our stages of foreign productions, but it may have also been adapted to feature Canadian-born artists and their creations. As it briefly existed, the

Trans-Canada Theatre Organization is a large-scale example of an attempt and failure to revive the pre-war touring system in Canada.

Throughout the decade, permanent professional companies in Ontario were frequently as short-lived as the Trans-Canada Theatre Organization. As Lawrence writes in “Vaughan Glaser on Stage in Toronto,” the success of permanent companies was often inhibited by “the small population of most Canadian cities[,] the vigorous competition from moving pictures,” and from those American and British productions that still made use of the diminished touring system.

One of the more successful stock theatre ventures was Vaughan Glaser’s from 1921-1928. Glaser had been a prominent producer of stock theatre in several U.S. cities for over twenty years when he came to Toronto to found a permanent company. In the U.S. he had found success in producing ‘light fare,’ a tradition which he continued in Toronto: “avoiding any serious drama,

Glaser’s company played to packed houses, almost without exception over its seven-year stay in the city.”102 Toronto’s growing population during the decade made it one of the few cities in

Ontario that could sustain even one permanent company for that length of time; this was helped

102 Scott 37. 76 by Glaser’s ample experience in American professional theatre. Though seemingly another

American theatre producer attempting to revive pre-war models, Glaser’s success in Toronto was partially due to the familiarity of his name and face to local audiences. Glaser was both a producer and an actor, becoming a regular and recognizable performer in his own shows. In a

1926 review of Glaser’s Rip Van Winkle production, the critic writes “Glaser himself plays ‘Rip,’ and gives the part much of the pathos and drollery for which he is well known.”103 Glaser used his own name prominently in all of his ventures, producing primarily under the name of the

‘Vaughan Glaser Players’ out of the Victoria Theatre, which was frequently called ‘Glaser’s

Victoria’ in the press. He also produced shows in Loew’s Uptown Theatre under the name

‘Vaughan Glaser Repertoire Company,’ even founding a short-lived satellite operation of the same name in Hamilton in 1925. Glaser found a successful business model in choosing shows that had recently proven successful in London or New York,104 as well as older popular favourites such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin;105 though undoubtedly a commercial venture, the

Vaughan Glaser Players were appreciated by Toronto audiences and critics, who saw his theatre as a “repertory house for the better ‘stock’ productions.”106 However, by 1928 business was floundering for Glaser’s company. Mason blames this on the increasing popularity of film, vaudeville, radio, and spectator sports; critics at the time saw the company’s closure simply as

Glaser’s ‘retirement,’ which was considered “a distinct loss to the community.”107 Glaser’s success proves that during the 1920s there was still room for a traditional professional model to thrive in Toronto, provided the quality was consistent, the local audiences felt some connection

103 Mason “Music and Drama” 10. 104 “Theatre Forecast for 1927-28” 20. 105 “Brief Comment” 20. 106 “Theatre Forecast for 1927-28” 20. 107 “Canadian Little Theatres” 20. 77 to the venture, and the producer knew enough about the American professional industry to work around it.

Though Glaser’s success demonstrated there was hope for a permanent stock theatre in

Toronto, no one was able to replace Glaser’s company when it closed. Other attempts at sustaining a permanent company in Toronto during the 1920s were usually headed by a producer and businessman from America or Britain, often accompanied by a company of actors from their home country - occasionally employing Canadians for smaller roles and/or for filling in their back-stage crew. The Campbell-Duncan Players, an all-British company, opened in Toronto in

1923 with a successful production of the melodrama Wildfire, about which The Globe’s critic E.

R. Parkhurst wrote “[j]udging by the enthusiastic reception […] there is still a strong demand in

Toronto for real old-fashioned melodramas.”108 However, after at least one more production by the company in June of 1923 - Eugene Walter’s The Wolf109 - the company seems to have either folded or left Toronto. Actor-manager Cameron Matthews “headed a stock company of British

Players here [in Toronto] at the Princess, the Regent and the Comedy theatres”110 for a few seasons in the early part of the decade, achieving positive response with shows previously popular in London, such as the farcical comedy When Knights Were Bold which it presented at the Princess in 1923.111 Matthews seemed to be planning a cross-country tour in 1925 - though it is unclear if it actually occurred.112 However, by the end of the decade the Cameron Matthews

Players had departed.113 Despite the sporadic existence of professional theatres in Toronto throughout the decade, this professional activity could not be accurately called its own

108 Parkhurst “Music and the Drama” 22 May 1923: 15. 109 Parkhurst “Music and the Drama” 12 Jun. 1923: 15. 110 “Cameron Matthews Plans Tour” 8. 111 Parkhurst “Music and the Drama” 22 May 1923: 15. 112 “Cameron Matthews Plans Tour” 8. 113 “[The present writer] still deeply regrets the departure of the Cameron Matthews Players.” - “Canadian Little Theatres” 20. 78 professional theatre field, nor were the companies themselves especially Canadian in cultural identity or employment practices. As an uncredited writer surmised in one 1925 Globe article,

“of our three resident stock companies, one is frankly American and announces a program of

Broadway successes only, one is Canadian-American, and only the third is chiefly English”;114 very little of the activity originated from Canadian businessmen or artists, and not enough of the ventures sustained themselves long enough for field dynamics to develop. This decade of short- lived professional companies in Toronto gradually proved the pre-war professional models to be less financially viable and less trustworthy than before the war.

While Toronto audiences saw many professional companies try and fail to sustain themselves, in other Ontario cities and towns the diminishment of the touring system model was more complete. A 1930 Globe article states that Kingston had, by the end of the 1920s, learned to serve “its own artistic needs regardless of the difficulties which beset concerts and theatres under modern conditions.”115 It achieved this by relying on its local amateur drama, arts, and music groups that were active and respected within the community. Kingston’s main theatrical venue closed late in the decade after poor box office success met many of the touring productions it hosted: “When it became known a year ago that the only theatre in Kingston was to be permanently closed, the feeling of regret was so strong and so wide-spread that any one would have thought that the people of Kingston were enthusiastic and consistent theatre-goers.

The box office told a different story.”116 This sentiment, that Ontario audiences had not sufficiently patronized touring productions when they were more plentiful, was commonly repeated in newspapers around the province as theatrical venues continued to close. The notion that audiences were to blame, rather than the productions for not properly engaging with local

114 “Better Sense Needed: An overseas report” 10. 115 “The Arts in Kingston” 22. 116 “Stage and Screen” 277. 79 populations, was also recurrent in the professionalization discourse of the 1930s – a symptom of the frustration many theatre artists and critics felt with the changing entertainment landscape.

Some Ontario cities outside Toronto still saw professional activity. Hamilton, for example, continued to host numerous short-lived stock companies during the 1920s, including a branch of

Vaughan Glaser’s Toronto-based stock company, and Ottawa was fortunate enough to still occasionally see prestigious touring productions. However, the theatrical activity in smaller

Ontario cities and towns was generally amateur or non-existent.

In 1925, The Globe published a 13-part series called “Backgrounds and Horizons” in which critic Lawrence Mason surveyed the ‘music and drama’ of numerous small towns across

Western Ontario, including Guelph, Kitchener, Stratford, and Galt. Though the series set out to discover both the music and drama of these towns, Mason quickly found far more musical activity than dramatic; in each locale he discovered a variety of choirs, brass bands, and even small orchestras, but he struggled to find much evidence of theatrical societies. The closest to a home-grown professional theatre was found in Brantford, where a group called The Heintzman

Club produced “mixed entertainment instead of strictly dramatic performances”117 and was apparently considered semi-professional, though this designation is not discussed in any depth by

Mason. This Globe series demonstrates that very little amateur theatrical activity had sprung up by 1925 in smaller Ontario cities and towns to fill the dearth of entertainment left by the lack of professional touring productions. Generally, the desire to replace the old theatrical system developed more slowly in small Ontario population centres than in Toronto.

It would be an over-simplification to state that WWI had completely stopped the touring of British and American productions to Canada. There were still companies from abroad bringing their productions to larger cities of Ontario (with occasional stops in Montreal), but the

117 Mason, “Backgrounds and Horizons” 14. 80 war had permanently changed the theatrical landscape. The old ‘road’ was diminished post-WWI and North American touring did not return to its pre-war levels. The costs of travelling remained high and prohibited tour stops to anywhere but the largest urban centres, especially for companies from overseas. The drastic change to the old system was enough of a catalyst to begin a critical examination of Ontario’s theatrical landscape.

The Urge to Professionalize

As Huneault and Anderson state in Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada,

1850-1970, the professionalization process is not necessarily an inevitable or even positive progression for every occupation. Professionalism in the arts, they argue, is “inseparable from debates about the definition of fine art under modernism, the creation and mobilization of cultural capital in a classed society, competition for state resources […] and - underneath it all - a hegemonic dialectic between centre and margins.”118 As previously noted in Chapter One, the process of professionalization in artistic fields will inevitably privilege certain definitions of

‘art,’ ‘artist,’ and what is considered aesthetically pleasing. The professionalization process is not universally beneficial; intrinsic to the definition and function of professionalism is hierarchy and exclusion. Huneault and Anderson also refer to professionalization as a “historically contingent construct,”119 further denaturalizing the progression from amateur to professional. Within

Canadian theatre, the desire to professionalize was not an unavoidable progression – it emerged from a historical moment of shifting practices in the North American theatrical system.

The desire among Ontario theatre practitioners and critics to professionalize is historically contingent on a number of factors resulting from changes to the theatrical landscape and to

118 Huneault and Anderson 9. 119 Huneault and Anderson 9. 81

Canada’s national character brought on by WWI. Before these changes occurred, the lack of a home-grown professional theatre field was not generally viewed as a negative; it did not prevent

Canadian audiences from seeing professional shows, and it was accepted as the norm that

Canadian actors looking to practice their craft would participate in the professional theatre of the

U.K. or U.S. Many Canadian actors found employment abroad, or as extras in the touring productions passing by, and those with aspirations of professionalism sometimes made the transition to full-time cast member with the touring company. As long as the touring circuit fulfilled the most basic of theatrical entertainment needs and provided the hope of employment to those seeking it, there was little need or desire to professionalize Canadian theatre activity.

The professionalization urge in Canadian theatre, when it did begin to emerge, was born largely out of two post-war factors: the rise in patriotism and changes to the theatrical landscape that caused it to no longer meet the expectations of audiences, artists and critics. As the repeated failure of old professionalism models became the norm, acceptance began to set in that the pre- war system of touring and stock companies would not recover. It was in this moment of acceptance that professionalism models would begin to emerge, shaped by the rise in Canadian patriotism and a new lack of faith in conventional forms of professional theatre.

Increasingly consistent complaints in the media about the state of professional theatre in

Ontario indicated the begrudging acceptance that the old models were no longer reliable and that a change was due. The most common complaints found in 1920s Ontario newspapers were that not enough shows were being sent through Ontario, many of the most successful productions were not being sent to Canada at all, the shows that were being sent were of sub-par quality, and we were seeing far more American theatre than British. However, even with the greater influx of

American shows than British, frustrations were aimed at both countries’ cultural exports over the 82 quality and quantity being sent. A 1924 article in The Globe discusses the “many ‘dark’ weeks in local high-priced theatres”;120 these theatres had, for decades, been “mainly dependent on imported companies” rather than self-producing and so were ill-equipped to fill the gaps in their programming schedules. Many, such as the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, were converted into cinemas; others lowered their standards for what productions they would book. Mostly third-rate productions were touring Ontario and The Globe frequently featured complaints over the “refusal of New York managers to send their successes on the road.”121 This perhaps partially explains the success of Vaughan Glaser in Toronto for seven years, as he was known to produce competent productions of plays fresh off Broadway and West End runs once their rights were released. Many of the productions sent from America were not the big ‘hits’ from Broadway, as

Southern Ontario became known as a means to recoup financial losses for a production that had performed poorly elsewhere. Critics in The Globe and The Toronto Daily Star contended that any productions of quality or success were being denied Canadian venues and audiences: “The condition of the legitimate drama on this continent is now admittedly rather desperate. In the vast stretch of the United States it is rarely seen outside of a few theatres on Broadway. In Canada really important theatrical dates are so few and far between in the great majority of the cities.”122

The touring system had so diminished that the ‘legitimate productions’ were now being kept stationary in New York.

It is important to note that even pre-war, there had always been some grumbling from cultural critics about the American domination of the touring circuit, while British productions were traditionally seen as preferable to American. Post-war, the criticism of British touring productions increased as the underwhelming productions sent to Ontario from the U.K. resulted

120 “A Bystander At The Office Window” 5 121 “A Bystander At The Office Window” 5. 122 “The Little Theatre” 25. 83 in frustration among reviewers. “The few English companies who visit us are almost negligible”, notes one in a 1925 Globe article, continuing on to say that the “feebleness” of British productions being sent to Toronto only added to the concern that the city would look solely to

America for its theatrical entertainment: “No sane man would charge Toronto with the least disloyalty to the Empire or to the Mother Country, but geography is a stubborn fact and economic laws have little regard for sentiment.”123 Similar complaints continue to appear throughout the decade, mostly from Toronto newspaper critics. The crisis of hope for the recovery of the pre-war touring system was not just a matter of insufficient entertainment; it was a national cultural concern as well, born out of the anxiety that cheap, commercial American culture would have no impediment to dominating Canada.

The changes to the touring system and the increasing apprehension over American culture occurred simultaneously with another reaction to WWI: a boost in patriotism and national self-awareness. “A wave of patriotic fervour - the overriding response to the First World War - rolled not only across Canada as a whole, but also through the theatre world”;124 much of the

Canadian-produced theatre during the war focused on the war itself and the accomplishments of

Canadian soldiers. Many historians argue that the post-WWI Canadian patriotism was an extension of our relationship with Britain rather than a more independent national pride; Alan

Filewod asserts that while Canadian theatres during the war were producing patriotic fare, “it was as an expression of this kind of imperial patriotism.”125 He goes so far as to state “at the time the war was felt by many to intensify the British connection and give new life to the ideals of

Imperial Federation.” Indeed, British stage traditions would be prioritized in most Canadian- created theatre for several more decades; however, there are signs in the 1920s that Canadian

123 “Better Sense Needed” 10. 124 Filewod 79. 125 Filewod 80. 84 audiences desired national cultural autonomy. Returning to the example of the Trans-Canada

Theatre Organization, which sought to book British productions for Canadian venues, O’Neill argues in “The British Canadian Theatrical Organization Society and the Trans-Canada Theatre

Society” that an additional reason for the failure of the organization was that it did not account for this change in patriotic consciousness: “As an exercise in venture capitalism, however, the

Trans-Canada Theatres was out of step with the post-war era. […] They did not make allowances for the shift of public interest from live theatre to motion pictures, and for the creation of a

Canadian national awareness by the war. […] Canadians were no longer willing to accept an

English company simply for its Englishness.”126 The post-war patriotism certainly did not result in an all-out rejection of British productions or traditions; however, combined with the problematic changes in the touring system, it did lead to awareness that Canadians could refuse a literal and complete British domination of our theatres. British culture was no longer viewed as the only possible alternative to American culture.

Cognizance of the potential for cultural autonomy occurred when Canada’s entertainment landscape was in flux; the system of theatrical touring changing in frustrating ways and the advent of film meant that audiences were adapting their cultural consumption habits. While we know these changes did not result in the immediate creation of a professional theatre, they did lead to the “belief in the possibility, or desirability, of a Canadian drama” that Denison noted.127

As we move on to the models for a professional Canadian theatre, it is important to remember that writings about the creation of a professional theatre and writings about the creation of a

Canadian drama, while sometimes seemingly focused on different end goals, are intertwined in the same discourse as a response to the same historical-cultural shifts. The plans for ‘a Canadian

126 O’Neill 61. 127 Denison 89. 85 drama’ often involve or require professionalism signifiers, such as training centres or a field- wide association. One writer for The Globe, in 1928, calls for a provincial and a national association of little theatre groups as a means of growing the Canadian theatre:

The time has now come when these widely scattered efforts should be recognized, given systematic encouragement, assistance, or guidance, and brought into a Province-wide association under Governmental auspices for the sake of far-reaching effects upon the public at large […]. Obviously, moreover, when each Province has completed this procedure, the next and final step will be the uniting of these Provincial associations in a National organization.128

To some, a Canadian theatre would be a professional theatre; to others, it would look like the amateur Little Theatres already emerging across the country. Either way, in the late 1920s it was becoming more apparent that Canadian theatre could organize and provide a viable entertainment and cultural alternative to the diminished touring system. The above Globe article also demonstrates an important, if unfortunate, step towards professionalization: the writer begins to distance his or her vision for this new, organized theatre association from certain amateurism signifiers, specifically the ‘socialization’ aspect of amateur theatre. “The purpose of this hypothetical association would not be just to provide amusement or pastime for idle pleasure- seekers,” states the writer, in a clear slight to those who would participate solely in social drama groups.129 While many writers, such as this one, promoted changes to the theatre field that would increase its professionalism, most stopped short of encouraging Canadian theatre to behave more commercially.

Foundation for Professional Models

128 “A Provincial Drama League” 22. 129 “A Provincial Drama League” 22. 86

The dissatisfaction of the 1920s would shape the theatre professionalization discourse of the

1930s. The urge to professionalize was born out of post-war patriotism and frustrating changes to the North American theatrical system; the models for a professional Canadian theatre that would soon emerge were geared towards creating a Canadian dramatic style and offsetting the flaws of old professional models. The most significant factor against which new professional models would react was commercialism, as characterized by the American theatre industry. As the 1920s drew to a close, frustrations with the theatrical landscape increasingly focused on the domination of Canadian theatres by American culture both literally and stylistically. American commercial theatre bore the brunt of the frustrations with the post-WWI theatrical landscape; thus, the models and strategies that would develop during the 1930s were (consciously or unconsciously) designed to create a professional theatre field in which American commercial values were not prioritized.

By the dawn of the 1930s, more critics began to view a British domination as not especially preferable to an American one, and as an impediment to Canada’s own cultural growth. Denison wrote, “our culture is one of two kinds. Either it is colonial or American. In a discussion of the theatre, it does not seem to matter much which. In either case the possibilities of a native theatre are nil.”130 Yet, the professional models of the 1930s would not show as strong a reaction to British theatre traditions as they would to American. The cultural relationship between Canada and Britain was complex and many critics and artists still recommended direct inspiration and influence from the U.K. as the best strategy towards growing our theatre. As Maria Tippet writes in Making Culture, describing the cliquish nature of

Anglo-Ontario arts culture at this time, “Most private cultural organizations were content to remain exclusive enclaves complacently encouraging traditional British culture”; not only did

130 Denison 90. 87 those with ample social and cultural capital believe this traditional British culture was superior to the “the popular forms entering from the United States”, they also deemed it to be “infinitely better than [the culture] produced by the New-Canadian or ethno-cultural groups in their midst.”131 British theatre still possessed levels of cultural and social capital that were inconceivable for any amateur Canadian theatre, be it from an English-speaking company or an

“ethno-cultural group,” many of which were already theatrically active at this point. This would remain the case throughout the 1930s, with British theatrical traditions signifying superiority;

English-speaking theatre adhering to British aesthetic tastes was better received and certainly more centred in Ontario culture than theatre emerging from immigrant groups or companies that used American styles. The distasteful nature of the American theatrical domination combined with the less disliked but still complicated British influence shaped many of the early professionalization models to come.

The risk of being subsumed by American culture was ever-present due to a number of factors, chief among them geographical proximity – a fact felt by both critics and practitioners.

Noted Voaden in 1928, “with our long frontier and scattered civilization there is a very grave danger that the pressure of American influence will in time override our national and British character. Geographically and culturally we are becoming one unit with the United States.”132

Critic B.K. Sandwell writes as well that Canada having little stage identity of its own made it especially susceptible to inheriting the theatrical traditions of its Southern neighbours:

Imbued with that sublime continentalism which still prevents most of our [American] neighbours from seeing that there can be anything on this continent that does not arise out of the Declaration of Independence, they assure us that if there were a Canadian stage it would merely be a feeble imitation of the American. They tell us that our mentality is the

131 Tippet 9. 132 Voaden “A National Drama League” 106. 88

same as their own, that our social and economic conditions are the same, that our plays and our acting (if we had any) would be the same.133

The arrogance Sandwell characterizes the U.S. as possessing is indicative of how the commercial theatre was viewed: supremely confident with little substance and indifferent to the concerns of

Canadians. As previously noted, American professional theatre had always been common in

Ontario venues, but before the war it had been supplemented by a high number of British productions. When traveling costs had been lower and the touring system was at its peak, there was a lesser risk of American touring companies gaining a total monopoly of Canadian theatres.

With that risk increased, the proposals for a professional Canadian theatre would have to prevent this cultural domination and counteract the side effects of American culture.

The fear regarding the domination of our theatres by the U.S. lay not only in a desire for cultural autonomy, but in the fact that the American theatre system was not a desirable professional model; it was perceived as a model of poor values and low integrity; of arrogance, condescension, and shoddy artistic quality. The result of “bookings so far as legitimate attractions are concerned [being] in the hands of New York”, as argued in a 1930 article in The

Globe, was to “stultify the good work done by both Canadians and English.”134 The Americans were dominating us not with their superior productions, but with their sub-par commercial vehicles and their control over of the North American rights to popular plays from the U.K.

Practitioners like Bertram Forsyth and Herman Voaden, alongside reviewers from The Globe and

Star complained that these American touring productions were business ventures only, created with no artistic vision in mind. Besides its concern with profitability above all else, there were other qualities of American theatre that many in Ontario did not want for Canadian theatre. In a

1925 Toronto Daily Star article, American theatre is criticized for its lack of respect for its

133 Sandwell 18. 134 “British View of Our Stage” 20. 89 playwrights; “The integrity of a play is a principle in good art, but the ordinary American stage has no regard for the author in this respect, and chops and changes without scruple.”135 A commercial theatre was deemed as one containing little regard for the integrity or wishes of its artists. Significantly, during the 1930s one of the most oft-cited models for a professional

Canadian theatre was a playwright-centred theatre, a model inspired by the distinctly non- commercial Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The model of the ‘stock company’ is also frequently equated with the least artistic of the American commercial theatre; in a 1930 article in The

Globe, the author refers to “stock companies of the old-fashioned unimaginative commercial type” in America and chastises these theatres for putting on the airs of being art theatres, tricking audiences into thinking they were new and innovative.136 Though today ‘stock’ and ‘repertory’ are often used interchangeably, at the time a distinction was made between the commercial stock companies of America and the professional repertory companies of the U.K. Though there were a few successful stock companies operating in Toronto during the 1920s, as previously noted, this type of company was associated in the media with old, pre-war professional traditions and it did not find much support as a model for a professional Canadian theatre in the coming decade.

Many of the early attempts at supplanting this American annexation of Canada’s theatres were commercial ventures. The Trans-Canada Theatre Organization represented a model for professionalism designed mainly to combat the “domination of Broadway.”137 Such models were more concerned with the fostering of an industry of Canadian theatre producers and booking agents than an industry of theatre artists; it was a model for an industry of importing culture, not creating it. Between the distaste for the influence of American theatre and the failure of the

Trans-Canada Theatre organization, the model of the commercial professional theatre was

135 “Revolution is coming” 8. 136 “Canadian Little Theatres” 20. 137 Massey 53. 90 proving unpopular by early to mid-1930s. Hart House director Bertram Forsyth, quoted in a 1930 article in The Toronto Daily Star, stated: “While the commercial men are in control of the theatre they cannot get the best work. That is to say, that their talk about giving the people what they want is merely the managers’ way of excusing themselves for giving the people what they want to give them.”138 The desire for a non-commercial theatre fed the growth of the ‘Little Theatre’ movement in Canada, which stood in stark contrast to the large professional companies of the past both in size and artistic goals. Little Theatres sprang up throughout the U.S. and Canada during this period; they were smaller in size and geographical reach than most professional theatres, were usually amateur, and were designed to serve their immediate community. Theatre critics described these Little Theatres using lofty and idealistic terms. They were called

“laboratories or studios of theatrical art where first ideas in acting, scenery, lighting, costume, and dramatic composition itself, are tried out”;139 they “give us leadership and achievement in the fields of artistic experiment and native Canadian drama.”140 While the Canadian Little

Theatres were not professional, as a theatrical model they were perceived as an alternative or antidote to the commercial theatre: “Is the little theatre about to displace the average big theatre in the dramatic world?” asks one Toronto Daily Star article.141 If not professional themselves, at the turn of the decade the Little Theatres were starting to look like a fruitful path towards a professional Canadian theatre. As such, critics often hazily defined the distinction between Little

Theatres and professional theatres.

The Little Theatre model was appealingly different from commercial models; its focus was the art of the theatre, as well as innovation and artist development. In Canadian Forum,

138 “Revolution is coming” 8. 139 “Notes and Comment” 41. 140 “Canadian Little Theatres” 20. 141 “Revolution is coming” 8. 91 audiences were described as growing frustrated with the American style of theatre; there was “a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with the commercialized theatre, manipulated by exploiters who care nothing for art and everything for money.”142 A “return to the small or the little theatre” meant turning away from the spectacle of American touring productions, and creating instead theatres “where a small audience without the distraction of obtrusive stage furnishings may depend increasingly on the author and his interpreter, the actor.”143 Despite the existence of Little

Theatres throughout the U.S., in Canada the Little Theatre model was not seen as another form of American theatrical domination. The movement’s anti-commercial values seemed to eclipse its American source. The movement in Canada was also sometimes credited as having taken its inspiration from the U.K.: “Results of the [Little Theatre] experiment in London and Dublin, as well as in the principal cities of Europe, are on the whole convincing.”144 This model was a particularly potent one at the end of a decade during which most commercial theatre ventures had failed and the touring system had diminished to subpar American productions. With a lack of prestigious productions coming from Britain, the Little Theatres provided the best hope of supplanting the American professional theatre in Canada. In a 1930 article discussing the fear that Canadian Little Theatres would start taking on some of the traits of American commercial stock companies, the author emphasizes the growing importance of these theatres by declaring,

“if our Little Theatres become thinly veneered stock companies, art, in the best sense, is dead.”145 Hart House, itself a Little Theatre, was listed alongside the professional companies in many summations of the highlights of Toronto theatre, including The Globe’s “Theatre Forecast for 1927-28.” The article boasts that “not only residents but also visitors from out of town will be

142 “Editorial Comment: The Little Theatre” 203. 143 “Revolution is coming” 8. 144 “Revolution is coming” 8. 145 “Canadian Little Theatres” 20. 92 interested in the prospects before us for the coming season”, prospects including “one pre- eminent Little Theatre at Hart House.”146 In another Globe article from 1930, the Little Theatres are listed as the most plausible solution for the New York booking agents: “How this state of affairs can be remedied is neither within the province of these letters nor my own power to suggest. Two possibilities are, however, worth consideration. […] First, the Little Theatre.”147

The model of the Little Theatre suggests an alternative path towards developing artistic quality and skill, rather than the traditional commercial stepping-stones to professionalism. The emphasis on artistic integrity in the Little Theatres also served the post-war patriotism by suggesting a path towards a distinctly Canadian theatre.

Throughout the 1930s, critics and practitioners would argue in frequent diatribes published in The Globe, Saturday Night, and Canadian Forum that no clear model for Canadian professional theatre could be fostered until the character of the Canadian drama (and playwright) emerged; the seeds of a Canadian playwright-centric model can be found in the 1920s’ positioning of the playwright as the most vital agent in a professional theatre field. “The free theatre must never forget its duty to the playwright,” writes Vincent Massey in 1922; “It must do more than play good plays well; it must seek out new plays.”148 Intertwined with the Little

Theatre model, this emphasis on playwrights was indicative of the notion that the playwright represented the artistry and integrity on which the commercial theatre had turned its back. In an interview with Hart House’s Bertram Forsyth in The Toronto Daily Star, he states that “[t]he commercial man spoils the author’s plays,” and so the commercial theatre has become less appealing to the playwright who “looks to the little theatre now to produce his play as he writes

146 “Theatre Forecast for 1927-28” 20. 147 “British View of Our Stage” 20. 148 “The Prospects of a Canadian Drama” 56. 93 it.”149 The Canadian playwright needs encouragement and space to grow his or her own artistic voice, Forsyth argues; in the commercial theatre, a playwright’s choices are overruled and the new play is “filled with jazzy remarks and vaudeville stuff, which the commercial man thinks he ought to have put into it by the play-doctor.”150 The position of playwright was seen as being in crisis in the commercial theatre, and thus was a natural position on which to centre many of the professional theatre models that would emerge in the 1930s.

This playwright-centred model, even more so than the Little Theatre, was inspired by the success of the Abbey Theatre in reinvigorating the Irish theatre voice and industry. As such, the lack of emerging Canadian playwrights was a source of worry, but only a few suggestions were made in the 1920s to remedy the situation. One 1928 Globe writer proposes that if “those who control dramatics at the university would encourage student playwrights to dramatize the stirring life of this new country, audiences might have the welcome chance of seeing something other than the prettiness of Milne and Barrie.”151 Another Globe article, published just a month later, suggests that a provincial drama league might “reflect a growing and healthy Canadianism, thus stimulating our native playwrights to utilize Canadian themes or material.”152 Diagnosing the lack of Canadian playwrights, reinforcing the playwright as vital to the non-commercial theatre, and encouraging amateur playwrights: these small recommendations and observations were as far as the playwright-centric model developed during the 1920s.

The final anti-commercial model that began to take hold at the end of the 1920s was based on education and training. Practitioners such as Voaden, himself a high school teacher in addition to a theatre practitioner, argued that we would not find any outstanding Canadian theatre

149 “Revolution is coming” 8. 150 Bertram Forsyth, quoted in “Revolution is coming” 8. 151 “The Little Theatre” 25. 152 “A Provincial Drama League” 22. 94 artists (playwrights or other) until training existed for them. As amateur theatre activity increased, Voaden, along with numerous Globe critics, voiced concerns that even naturally talented individuals would not reach their potential unless educational institutions were created.

“It is unfortunate that there is no progressive school of the drama in Canada to afford training for our leaders in the principles and technique of the new stagecraft,”153 writes Voaden, arguing that those practicing theatre without this training would be more likely to produce derivative and old- fashioned work. Theatres like Hart House and the Sarnia Drama League were praised for educating audiences and company members alike; Lawrence Mason recounted the Sarnia group being supported by “the Board of Education […] in recognition of the essentially educational character of the work being done.”154 Not until the 1930s would there be much support for dedicated theatre training, simply because there was not yet any practical hope for a professional industry to employ theatre school graduates. In this respect, Canada was still a part of the professional theatre fields of Britain and the U.S.; the established training paths in those countries had long served ambitious young Canadian theatre artists with the means to access them. The lack of available training for theatre artists in Canada was one of the most tangible reasons talented young pre-professionals were migrating to other countries to start their careers, rather than staying at home to help build the theatre industry.

The educational model for a professional Canadian theatre would become more prominent during the 1930s. It taps into the vital professionalism signifier of standardized skills, training, and qualifications/certification – all barriers to being admitted into the profession. As noted in Chapter One, this professional signifier has always been difficult to apply to theatre. In most countries with a professionalized theatre industry, experience and skills are more important

153 “What is Wrong with the Canadian Theatre?” 86 154 “The Sarnia Idea” 72. 95 than certification (excepting for the benefits of networking and prestige that can come along with certain educational institutions). Even still, critics and artists in Canada recognized educational institutions as an important signifier of professionalism, if not necessarily vital as a barrier to entry into the field. For many of those promoting the educational model for Canadian theatre, it was not simply the training of practitioners that was seen as important: it was also the education of audiences. “The audience plays as important a part in a performance as the actors, and they have to be taught to hear and see just as much”, said Bertram Forsyth in a 1925 article; he adds that the “responsibility for this […] lay with the press and the educational authorities.”155 For artists to set a professional standard of work, audiences must be taught what level to expect from

Canadian professionals. This notion of training audiences was also another way to blame audiences for the slow progress of professionalization, just as with the closing of old professional venues.

This brings us to one of the most prevalent and effective professionalization strategies that would be employed in the coming decades: shifting the public perception of theatrical professionalism. Many of the models for a professional theatre suggested during the 1920s were different than the theatre models of the past. Canadian audiences had long been trained to see a certain type of theatre production as professional, as well as certain venues and certain countries of origin. For any of these new Canadian models to be attempted in practice and to have any success in working towards a new field of professional theatre, the public would have to be educated to accept different versions of professional theatre. A change in the public paradigm of

‘theatrical professionalism’ would need to occur.

At the dawn of the 1930s, Ontario audiences and critics had grown averse to American commercial theatre, though it would continue to heavily influence public perceptions of

155 “Revolution is coming” 8. 96 theatrical professionalism. Prevailing professionalization models at the beginning of this new decade displayed hope for a theatre field concerned with artistry over commercialism; proposals emphasized Canadian playwrights, Little Theatres, education, and finding a national dramatic voice. However, the plausibility of a professional Canadian theatre was still not in the public consciousness; Canadian theatre was still considered automatically amateur, and professional theatre was, by default, foreign. In further chapters, we will examine how the professionalism paradigm had to shift for the public for audiences and critics alike to accept any Canadian company as professional.

As we continue into the early 1930s, amateur activity increasingly compensated for the weakened touring system, though many smaller communities would not create their own theatrical entertainment until later in the decade. For many creators and audiences, the immediate goal was a practical one: fill the gaps in the entertainment landscape. While many of the amateur theatres created manifested one or more emerging professionalism models, much of the amateur work being created showed how stubborn conventional notions of theatrical professionalism were. British styles and traditions would continue to dominate the theatre and aesthetic criteria for excellence. However, examples of nations that stepped out from under Britain’s dominance also would become increasingly appealing as models (i.e. The Abbey Theatre in Dublin). In

Chapter Three, I will examine how the Canadian theatre professionalization discourse among artists and critics would evolve based on the increasingly skilled amateur theatre activity of the

1930s, the use of elements from popular professional models in practice, and changing public and media rhetoric around professional theatre. 97

Chapter 3: Developing Field Dynamics and Boundaries Through Professional Models

“[O]nly when a country has dared to throw off the leading-strings of foreign traditions and

launch out ‘on its own’ has it ever amounted to anything in the arts.”

- “Genuine Canadian Drama” The Globe 6 Dec. 1930: 21.

At the dawn of the 1930s, Ontario boasted increasingly active regional theatre communities and the effects of the Depression further the chances of the touring system ever recovering.

Throughout the rest of the decade, up until the start of WWII, certain professionalization models and strategies began to manifest in practice in Ontario amateur theatre; in turn, the Ontario theatre landscape started to exhibit certain characteristics of a professional community or field, such as aesthetic standardization and boundaries. There were not yet any locally owned and operated professional theatres in Ontario, so the boundaries were between different levels of amateur - separated by education, culture/language, purpose and aesthetics. Professionalization models and strategies were still largely hypothetical rather than actualized during this decade, but the act of striving towards them developed the field’s boundaries by reinforcing specific aesthetic criteria, establishing of barriers to access, and drawing distinctions between social dramatic groups and the Little Theatres. The Little Theatres represented an actualized theatrical model on the upper echelons of amateur; they increasingly constituted the mainstream or the

‘centre’ of the Ontario theatre landscape, and most of the province’s emerging dynamics and boundaries were derived from the Little Theatres’ activities or from initiatives built for them.

Some of the professionalization models and strategies influencing Ontario theatre during this decade were localized to regional communities, while others were common across the province.

This chapter will focus on those province-wide trends and developments, including national 98 trends that were particularly influential throughout Ontario. The Dominion Drama Festival

(DDF) is a prime example of a national development in theatrical training and aesthetic standardization that, during the 1930s, especially affected and frequently centred Ontario.

The standards of aesthetic tastes and competency in Ontario theatre during this period were drawn from British styles and traditions, reinforced by the DDF, and to a lesser extent from the remaining influence of American touring productions. With artistic professionalism intertwined with competence and aesthetic taste, the processes by which a theatre field professionalizes and by which it establishes its criteria for aesthetic excellence are inextricably linked. Aesthetic criteria can be used as a device to separate the professionals from the amateurs, and to bar the latter from operating within the professional field. Thus, the earliest dynamics suggesting the forthcoming professionalization of the Ontario theatre field were dynamics of exclusion. Distinction was drawn between the creators of ‘good’ amateur theatre and the creators of less valuable amateur theatre – created to socialize with one’s peers or, in the case of immigrant cultural centres, to preserve one’s culture. A gulf widened between the social/cultural drama groups and those theatres that were seen as more ambitious, trained, and qualitatively, most notably the Little Theatres.

Aesthetic Taste

During the 1930s, Ontario theatre began to manifest certain traits of a professional community, including common values, aesthetic tastes, and divisions between the centre and the margins.

Certainly regional theatre communities already existed in the province, concentrated around large and small population centres, but community-like traits were beginning to appear on a province-wide level during this decade. Anti-commercialism and the desire for a national dramatic style formed core values, featuring in the most popular models of the field’s 99 professionalization discourse. In acting, direction, technical competency, and aesthetics, pre-

WWI professional models still heavily influenced aesthetic standards. The Little Theatres were supposed to have more artistic goals than Broadway, touring productions, and stock companies, but traditional perceptions of what was professional-quality theatre did not die easily. The aesthetics that developed over this decade represented a mixture of consciously cultivated nationalism, anti-commercial values, and persisting foreign theatrical practices – the latter of which were particularly fortified through adjudication in the DDF competitions. An artistic field’s aesthetic taste is dependent on a number of factors, the foremost being capital; those who possess the most financial, social, and cultural power will have the most opportunities to reinforce their aesthetic tastes and influence field dynamics. Other factors in establishing a field’s criteria for aesthetic distinction are the intersection of aesthetics with other cultural values

(such as patriotism), the influence of other dominant cultures, and the communication and proliferation of aesthetics through community networks, education, and publications.

A National Dramatic Style

References in Ontario media to a “national theatre” during this period generally signified one of two concepts, both of which were hypothetical. The first concept to which “national theatre” could refer is that of a national dramatic style – something that could potentially characterize and thus unify the theatre across Canada. In fact, certain regions of Canada had achieved distinctive local theatre styles by the 1930s; French-speaking Quebec had a unique theatre culture and

Ontario’s many immigrant communities were performing their own national theatrical styles.

But, to the chagrin of many critics and to those at the centre of Ontario theatre, no distinguishing characteristics had emerged in Ontario yet to rival American or Irish play-writing – both seen as desirable examples of nations possessing a unique dramatic style. Ontario critics often conflated 100 the local state of theatre with the state of Canadian theatre as a whole, and so any discourse regarding a theatrical form or style became attached to the national dramatic style model – the concept a regional Ontario style of theatre much less frequently mentioned. Those hoping to achieve a national dramatic style model usually believed this would be developed by fostering local playwrights, though a few artists and critics also saw the possibility of a unique national theatrical style achieved through design, movement, political engagement, or some combination thereof. The phrase “national theatre” also often referred to the creation of a literal institution, a national theatre in the form of a single venue or a company that would tour the country regularly.

Though no concrete plans were made towards a National Theatre during the 1930s, the hope for such an institution was kept alive through frequent newspaper mentions, especially in in The

Globe. A 1932 article, which took stock of the current “Theatre Situation”, concluded “a

National Theatre, if it could possibly be financed in any of the various forms suggested, would play an extraordinarily important and welcome role at this juncture.”156 Another Globe article the following year summarized “How the Movement for a National Theatre Stand [sic] Today in

Different Parts of the Empire,”157 implying a general interest in a National Theatre as a theatrical model. The writer discusses the National Theatre efforts in various English-speaking countries such as England, Australia, Scotland, and Ireland, and then moves on to Canada’s “sporadic efforts toward the attainment of a National drama.” The article’s conclusion is that the closest

Canada has yet come to a “National Canadian Drama,” if not a literal National Theatre, was the recently founded Dominion Drama Festival (DDF). This 1933 Globe article blurs the distinction between a National Theatre and a national drama, though the two were often intertwined; the idea that a single institution or dramatic form could unify the country’s dramatic efforts in a

156 “Canada and Empire Year” 18. 157 “National Theatre” 11. 101 manner that would lead to legitimacy and professionalism was seen as both hopeful and plausible by many critics and artists working from Ontario. It is no wonder that these concepts emerged less positively in Quebec, the Eastern provinces, and other regions that bore little common- ground with Ontario in language, culture, and geography. With Ontario being so often treated as the epicenter of Canadian theatre – especially in the media - any National Theatre or national dramatic style was likely to represent central Canada first and foremost. So, though the two concepts embodied by the phrase “national theatre” were closely linked, for better or for worse, I will refer to the formal model as a national drama or dramatic style model and the singular institution as the National Theatre model.

Any publications engaging in the theatre discourse would, at some point during the

1930s, feature a discussion of the national dramatic style model. These discussions varied, depending in how skeptical the writer was of the possibility and benefit of such a thing. A writer for Canadian Forum in 1930 declared that “[t]he National Theatre already exists in Canada as a state of mind. But Canadians do not know quite how to give expression thereto.”158 Some did believe that, due to the patriotic urge in so much 1930s’ Ontario theatre, the next step was simply to discover the national mode of theatrical expression. Others were more pessimistic; “It can be doubted whether a Canadian drama can ever be developed on a purely amateur basis,” wrote

Sandwell in 1933.159 Despite the frequently repeated notion that the DDF’s national network of amateur activity may lead to a national dramatic style, Sandwell argued that professionalism – especially professional directors – must be achieved first. Focusing on the national character of dramatic activity of the 1930s was more idealistic than it was immediately practical. The hope was that achieving a national drama would help establish the Ontario theatre field and larger

158 “The Little Theatres” 144. 159 “Little Theatre Festival” 19. 102

Canadian theatre field, differentiating them through patriotism from pre-war models of foreign professional theatre. The desire to create a unique theatrical culture in Ontario was intertwined with nationalistic feelings – that the theatre created in the province should possess a local flavour, distinct from the rest of Canada, was not a major concern. It was far more important that

Ontario theatre kick-start a national drama and dramatic style. As previously noted, the 1920s saw “Canadians, who had joyfully welcomed the British-Canadian theatrical tours in 1913-1914,

[grow] resentful of the importation of foreign investment and technology which characterized all industries, including theatre”;160 as Ontario’s theatrical activity increased in the 1930s, it would have been patriotically as well as practically important for there to be a stylistic distinction between local theatre and the theatre abroad. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre directly inspired these

National Theatre and national drama models; the Irish company’s success in the face of British cultural domination would have made the development of Canadian drama seem even more achievable and desirable. The national dramatic style model illuminates the fact that defining boundaries around a burgeoning field is not only a lateral affair; boundaries between past and present are equally vital. The professionalization element of the national drama model was largely implicit, inferred by the presumed professional status of the National Theatre model and the frequently repeated notion that “only when a country has dared to throw off the leading- strings of foreign traditions” would it develop the characteristics of a professional field: standards for aesthetic taste and competence, and value for specialized skills and knowledge.

As Ontario theatre began its development of community-like characteristics throughout the decade and its aesthetic tastes became more established, the anxiety from critics and artists increased over the national character (or lack thereof) of the work the community was producing.

The Ontario theatre discourse during this period regarding a hypothetical national drama displays

160 O’Neill 66. 103 a desire to participate in a Canadian theatrical style and worry over how best to do so. It was acknowledged that a play or production could be distinctly Canadian while still being deeply flawed; creating Canadian theatre was not synonymous with creating good Canadian theatre.

Journalist Walter O’Hearn, in a 1937 Maclean's article, states: “The few plays that are being written in Canada today are not even about Canada, and most of them are hopeless attempts, with floundering continuity and bad stagecraft.”161 Other critics, however, encouraged “theatre managers and audiences” to give “[o]riginal Canadian plays […] a particularly cordial reception.”162 Using patriotic inspiration and eschewing mimicry of ‘foreign traditions’ was seen as a potential means to aesthetic distinction. The introduction to Six Canadian Plays, published in 1930 in Toronto, encourages readers to forgive the included plays for their artistic and technical flaws and to instead focus on these pieces of writing as the start of a national drama.

This strategy of encouraging local playwriting was popularly cited as the key to a national drama, and can be categorized as a sub-model or strategy of the national dramatic style model.

The playwright-centric strategy came up most frequently in critiques of the DDF’s role in developing playwrights, found in The Globe, Saturday Night, and Canadian Forum; this strategy was also frequently cited in relation to Hart House’s frequent production of Canadian plays, and in profiles on the occasional noteworthy Ontario playwright, such as Merrill Denison. This strategy is derived from the 1920s’ emphasis on playwrights as the antidote to commercial theatre, which was itself influenced by the success of the Abbey Theatre. A playwright-centric, patriotic theatre field was an attractive alternative to the commercial American theatre; O’Hearn, in his condemnation of most pre-existing Canadian plays, argued that “[n]othing more quickly

161 “Short-pants drama” 32. 162 “Canada and Empire Year” 18. 104 develops a national consciousness than a lively national theatre.”163 Though the idea of a national body of drama had started to gain popularity at end of the 1920s, it was throughout the 1930s that playwriting competitions and other strategies to encourage Canadian playwrights were actually implemented in Ontario and other provinces. A 1934 Globe article references “several prize competitions open to native playwrights,” though only mentions “the British Columbia

Drama Festival Association” as a specific example.164 The New Theatre Group, consisting of

Toronto’s Theatre of Action and the New Theatres of Winnipeg and Montreal, together held a national one-act play contest in 1937. Like the other theatre contests of the decade, these were opportunities for encouraging theatre activity while also reinforcing specific aesthetic tastes and disseminating the contest-holder’s vision for a national dramatic style.

Of the new plays written during this decade, those that reinforced conventions of the past rather than innovating a new style were criticized. “The plays that have been written by

Canadians are mainly short, one-act affairs, without uniquely Canadian characters or settings,” writes O'Hearn; “We search in vain for the peculiar saltiness of Canadian speech, the things that distinguish them from the ‘rubber stamp of Americanism.’” The frequency of this complaint - that the Canadian plays being written they were not Canadian enough – suggests that critics hoped a new national style would depart from past, failed theatrical models that had proved to be to be too commercial. One playwriting contest held from 1929 to 1930 asked that all entrants contain “an exterior northern setting” and “contestants were advised to follow in mood or subject-matter the paintings of artists whose work they considered genuinely Canadian in character.”165 Besides that particular contest, it is uncommon to find in the media any concrete ideas of what a national drama should look like. Sandwell complained in 1933 “there is no such

163 “Short-pants drama” 32. 164 “Unfinished Business III” 18. 165 “Genuine Canadian Drama” 21. 105 thing as a recognized convention for the appearance or manner of any single Canadian type of character,”166 which would continue to be true for decades. In a 1930 Globe article on the significance of the 1929-30 contest and its resulting volume of Six Canadian Plays, the writer defines Canadian drama through comparison to foreign theatre:

So the great importance of ‘Six Canadian Plays’ is that they refuse to be derivative or European, but strike out in a passionate Canadianism which will be itself and finds its own country all-sufficient, or perish in the attempt. And since this attempt has twice been markedly successful in our own generation and within the British Empire, in Ireland’s Abbey Theatre and the Scottish National Theatre there is no reason why it should not be equally successful in Canada.167

This writer, like many others, chose to focus on defining by absence rather than on the presence of specifically national theatrical characteristics. With such a large country, it is easier to define by ‘isn’t’ rather than ‘is.’ It is noteworthy as well that the examples of a strong national drama cited by this writer in Toronto (and frequently cited by other Ontario critics and artists168) are

Ireland and Scotland, both smaller and more culturally unified nations than Canada. These examples and the whole national drama discourse display a desire, largely from Ontario, for an establishment and unification of the theatre field that was just barely starting to occur in Ontario and was practically impossible on a national scale.

Some practical proposals arose in Ontario for a national dramatic style that did include tangible characteristics; however, these were usually departures from accepted aesthetic tastes, ideas of theatrical competence, and the cultural centre. The most notable of these proposals were the Workers' Theatre Movement and Herman Voaden's Symphonic Expressionism, neither of

166 “Little Theatre Festival” 19. 167 “Genuine Canadian Drama” 21. 168 The Abbey Theatre was mentioned especially frequently in discussions of a hypothetical National Theatre: examples of this can be found in The Globe (“Genuine Canadian Drama” 6 Dec 1930, “National Theatre” 28 Jan 1933), Saturday Night (“Music and Drama: The Abbey Players” 5 Dec 1931), and Canadian Forum (“The Little Theatres” Nov 1930); in writing by practitioners such as Voaden and Denison. 106 which was practiced widely enough to be considered a manifestation of the national dramatic style model. DDF competition entries in both styles were poorly served by the competition's marking system and were received with mixed feelings by the adjudicators, and their dramatic characteristics were rarely carried over into practice by the mainstream Little Theatres. Ontario theatre of the 1930s was stuck in a paradoxical moment: there was an openly stated desire to create and participate in an exciting, new national dramatic style, yet the characteristic style of the province at this time was the traditional theatrical practices espoused by the DDF, while bold stylistic proposals remained marginalized.

The Workers' Theatre Movement consisted of politically-minded groups across the country, producing performances using techniques such as agit-prop and mass recitation; some groups also produced ‘true-story’ social plays, often written by Canadians. Though many of these groups formed independently, the most prominent of them were tied to their local

Progressive Arts Club. These leftist arts clubs had been founded in numerous Canadian cities, including Toronto and Vancouver. The Workers’ Theatre (also sometimes referred to as the

Workers’ Experimental Theatre) was an extension of the Toronto Progressive Arts Club and was a particularly active company during the 1930s, often touring around the province.

The Workers’ Theatre Movement within Ontario is often characterized as being on the margins of the theatre community, even within the memoirs of Toby Gordon Ryan in which she recounts being shut out socially and critically of the Dominion Drama Festival. Yet, in many ways the Workers’ Theatre groups of the 1930s more closely resembled or at least approached professional theatre than did the Little Theatres of Ontario. In a 1933 article for Canadian

Forum, journalist and playwright Ed Cecil-Smith argues for the Toronto Workers’ Theatre and 107 similar groups across the country as “the new Canadian dramatic movement”;169 he chastises mainstream magazines and newspapers for ignoring the Workers Theatre Movement, as he titles it. Cecil-Smith specifies that “the secretary of the Workers’ Theatre in Toronto is in touch with people in more than sixty cities, towns, and villages in Canada, who are either asking for plays, or for information as to how to establish their own groups. This excludes the six cities in which the Progressive Arts Clubs are located, and well indicates the probable growth of the movement.”170 Cecil-Smith describes the movement in 1933 as already widespread, and highlights its artistic and social innovations. He presents a strong argument for the Workers'

Theatre Movement as the new national dramatic style for which critics and artists have been searching.

The workers’ theatres did not become the national dramatic style of Canada, first and foremost, because no national dramatic style ever came to fruition – it remained a model of striving rather than actualization; second, the widespread activity and advanced quality of the movement may have been over-reported by Cecil-Smith. In Committing Theatre: Theatre

Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada, Alan Filewod argues that the classification of the 1930s’ “field of engaged radical theatre” as a full-on movement is an over-statement.171

Filewod suggests that the claims by Cecil-Smith in Canadian Forum, and other similar reports on the workers’ theatres, were “a simulation - an organizational tactic to give the appearance of a movement.”172 He contends that Cecil-Smith’s description of the stylistic conventions and innovations of the Workers’ Theatre Movement was an over-simplification of all the socially engaged, varied, and un-unified theatrical activity that took place throughout the 1930s.

169 Cecil-Smith 68. 170 Cecil-Smith 69. 171 Filewod 105. 172 Filewod 105. 108

Summarizing the problem with collecting all this theatre activity under a single classification,

Filewod states: “this was far from a movement of workers’ theatres, and the further it was removed from the doctrinal centre, the more varied were the forms of its performances.”173 Only a few particular theatre groups fit the image painted by Cecil-Smith in his Canadian Forum article; the more disparate groups, claimed as evidence of the movement’s proliferation, did not really resemble those groups at the ‘doctrinal centre’ of the movement. So, the workers’ theatres in reality may have been a less developed option for the new national dramatic style than Cecil-

Smith promised in Canadian Forum.

In practice, the Workers’ Theatre movement was likely not as unified or as prolific as it purported to be; many of the dramatic groups it claimed amongst its numbers were barely connected to the ‘flagship’ companies and clubs. The vast majority of evidence for this as a

‘movement’ comes from Cecil-Smith and other members of the Toronto Workers’ Theatre. As

Filewod argues, there was probably not a Workers’ Theatre Movement as most sources have historically reported it. From a perspective of tracing professionalization models and strategies, the fact that the workers’ theatres were over-reporting their proliferation and, in doing so, latching on to a popular professionalization model is more advantageous to this study than the existence of an actual movement. Back in Chapter One, I noted the importance of professional self-definition. Usually, an individual or company defines itself as professional once admitted into a profession; however, as we see in the case of the Workers’ Theatre Movement, self- definition may also be used as a professionalization strategy. Cecil-Smith presented the vast and vibrant politically-active theatre groups of the 1930s as a unified movement and as a potential national dramatic style, and in his presentation we see early iterations of several strategies that would become prevalent post-WWII: insistence (and even over-emphasis) on one’s professional

173 Filewod 108. 109 signifiers, attaching oneself to a popular theatrical model, and use of media to spread a certain narrative or rhetoric. Cecil-Smith’s article was partially effective: though the workers’ theatres waned as the decade progressed, historians have remembered and repeated his description of the

‘movement.’ The same strategies he employed would be used to achieve professional status by the first post-WWII professional theatre companies; if anything, Cecil-Smith was too early in his approach, and Ontario audiences were still not yet ready to accept smaller theatre groups – especially those outside of the community’s centre - as professional.

Perhaps predicting that the workers’ theatre groups would be inherently seen as amateur due to their size and venues, Cecil-Smith also employs in his Canadian Forum article the professionalization strategy of distancing his practice from amateurism. He defines the Worker’s

Theatre Movement against the amateur theatres: “During recent months there has sprung up across the country something which gives observers and participants alike the hope and believe that there now exists a future for the Canadian stage, beyond the drab and dreary prospect held up for it by the amateur dramatics of the ‘Little’ theatre, or the church stage.”174 Cecil-Smith emphasizes how quickly the movement has become a viable option to replace the Little Theatre movement as the “future for the Canadian stage” and lumps the Little Theatres in with the drama of church stages – which were two distinct categories of amateur theatre at this point in the

Ontario community. As Filewod puts it, “the workers’ theatre movement was marked by conditionality and desire, as something that was always coming into being.”175 The movement achieved growth and notoriety by reporting its own growth and notoriety. While the Workers’

Theatre did not claim it had achieved professionalism, Cecil-Smith states that once the movement gains “even one permanent theatre of its own” it would have “won the support of

174 Cecil-Smith 68. 175 Filewod 110. 110 many of the more proficient professional actors, directors and technicians in Canada”; he also emphasizes the high level of training of its members, a professional signifier which few other amateur Ontario theatres claim. It is impossible to evaluate the accuracy of Cecil-Smith’s predication, as the movement did not gain its own permanent theatre, but certainly the boldness of his claim predicts the confidence with which post-WWII professional theatres would have to insist upon their own professionalism and importance.

Because the Workers’ Theatre and similar groups remained marginalized from the political and aesthetic centre of 1930s Ontario theatre, the powerful members that the Workers’

Theatre had, such as Oscar Ryan and Ed Cecil-Smith, were more influential within political and other artistic spheres than in the theatrical sphere. Their audiences were different than those for which the Little Theatres performed in terms of class, geography, and previous theatre-going experience; artists like Ryan and Cecil-Smith prided themselves in seeking out audiences that had never been “reached by the bourgeois stage.”176 These theatre groups performed shows focused on working class issues for audiences that were currently facing those issues. The way that the workers’ theatres sought out audiences from different social demographics illuminates how narrowly the rest of the Ontario theatre communities considered their audiences; the Little

Theatres’ concerns were largely based on how to get local, middle- and upper-class theatre-goers to recognize Canadian theatre, rather than how to introduce their productions to entirely new audiences.

The style the workers’ theatres proposed was also quite far removed from the theatre traditions being adopted by the rest of the theatre community, providing little common ground aesthetically. In Chapter One, I outlined how any discussion of professional arts is inextricably intertwined with the creation of a unified field with specific aesthetic standards, among other

176 Cecil-Smith 69. 111 common values. As such, the largest impact that the Workers’ Theatre Movement had on professional theatre’s growth in Ontario was as an early example of a several professional strategies in action – strategies that would become very effective for the first post-WWII professional companies in Ontario.

The Workers’ Theatre of Toronto lasted for approximately two years. In 1936, many of its members re-organized themselves into the less radical but still socially-engaged Theatre of

Action, which made its performance debut with Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty. This new venture had even more aspirations of professionalism than did the Worker’s Theatre, importing a director from New York to give Theatre of Action legitimacy, polish, and to help train its members. As the group moved towards its stated goal of developing Canadian professional theatre, it became more similar to the mainstream Canadian theatre traditions found in the Little

Theatres; its scripts were rarely originals and were more often narrative than agit-prop. The start of WWII fractured the remnants of the Workers’ Theatre Movement, to the extent that it existed as a movement, preventing its new iteration from fully achieving its long-term goals of professionalism.

The other noteworthy proposal to come out of Ontario for a bold national dramatic style was Voaden’s Symphonic Expressionism. Like the Workers’ Theatre style of performance,

Symphonic Expressionism eschewed the conventions of realist drama, instead placing focus on design, dance, movement, and music. Its plays, all written by Voaden, prioritized the beauty of its poetic verse, symbolism, and character archetypes over traditional plot structure. Voaden was influenced by the Group of Seven painters and by the modern drama of Europe and the U.S., which he had studied in his post-secondary education. The stated intention of his Symphonic

Expressionist style was to reach truths about the relationship between Canadians and the 112 wilderness, and to “usher in the new theatre.”177 Similarly to Cecil-Smith in his Canadian Forum article, Voaden was unabashed in emphasizing Symphonic Expressionism as a viable model for a national dramatic style. However, unlike most members of the workers’ theatre groups, Voaden was heavily involved with the Little Theatres and the rest of the theatre in Ontario theatre; he was known as an educator and an expert on modern theatre playwriting and design, and was frequently invited to write about theatre for The Globe. He had previously brought success to the

Sarnia Little Theatre, which was held up by critic Lawrence Mason as an ideal model for the

Little Theatre movement. Symphonic Expressionism was a departure from the Ontario theatre landscape’s developing aesthetic standards, but it was a proposal from a figure who was familiar to the Little Theatres’ artists and supporters. Despite his work with the Little Theatres, Voaden was highly critical of them; he criticized them in a 1929 Globe article for their “lack of strong individuality and originality.” Voaden possessed the resources and freedom to travel Europe studying forms of theatre other than British, and from that experience came most of his frustrations with Ontario theatre. Whereas the Workers’ Theatre represented different politics and class (particular in their choice of audiences) than the Little Theatres, Voaden was largely of a class with those he criticized; it was his aesthetic ideology that differed. Thus, Voaden attempted to offer his stylistic innovations as his answer to the Little Theatres’ lack of originality.

The critical response to Symphonic Expressionism was a mix of optimism in Voaden’s ambitious ideas and dissatisfaction with the perceived competence of the work. Several Globe critics responded positively to the concept of Symphonic Expressionism and its viability as a more widespread theatrical style. “It is much to be hoped that the brave start toward a genuine

Canadian drama and art of the theatre, made under the leadership of Herman Voaden, will not be

177 “Symphonic Expressionism or Notes on a New Theatre” 92. 113 allowed to perish,” wrote one Globe writer in 1932;178 another, in 1933, praised Voaden for making “a strikingly original and independent start [at a national dramatic style] by rejecting

European models and influences, as far as possible, and going straight back to the uncontaminated air and soil and life of the Canadian North for his inspiration.”179 Voaden also received space in The Globe in 1932 to promote and describe his style, in an article entitled

“Symphonic Expressionism or Notes on a New Theatre.” Other outlets were less supportive of

Voaden’s style. E.A.D of Canadian Forum writes in 1932 that “[t]his new theatre is at once over-simplified and over-complicated.”180 The frequently mixed reception of Voaden’s work is epitomized in R.V. Howard’s 1932 review of Earth Song in Saturday Night:

To say that the production was a success would be an exaggeration. […] The audience was appreciative but its appreciation was for the novelty of the production, for the unusual light effects especially, rather than for the emotional meaning of the play as a whole. The break from traditional realism to an abstract symbolization of emotion was partly responsible for this, but the play itself, the lines and the action, lacked anything for the mind to seize upon to be emotional about.181

Howard’s sentiment - that the style was interesting in its innovation but the viewer could not attach to it emotionally - was echoed in numerous reviews of Voaden’s productions. Ultimately no other directors, playwrights, or designers were directly inspired to carry on Symphonic

Expressionism. With Voaden remaining the sole practitioner of his new theatrical form, it remained a thought-provoking oddity of the Ontario theatre landscape rather than a widespread dramatic style.

The fact that neither the Workers’ Theatre Movement nor Voaden’s Symphonic

Expressionism ultimately become widespread forms, even within a theatre landscape vocally

178 “Canada and Empire Year” 18. 179 “National Theatre” 11. 180 E.A.D. “Mr. Voaden’s Rocks” 75. 181 Howard “Earth Song” 6. 114 desperate for a distinctive dramatic style, demonstrates how cautiously agents of the 1930s

Ontario theatre field were developing the field’s aesthetic criteria and distancing themselves from the past. The Ontario theatre during this period was still establishing its aesthetic identity through what it was not; a national dramatic style around which a professional theatre would emerge remained a hypothetical model. The strategies employed towards realizing this model did, however, further several aspects of the professionalization process, especially the reinforcing of the distinction between a Canadian theatre field and the professional fields of other countries.

This model also helped to reinforce the burgeoning field’s accepted aesthetic criteria, even if those aesthetics were more traditional and less distinctly Canadian than many would have liked.

Perhaps most importantly, encouraging Canadian playwrights increased the importance of the

“playwright” role within the field, and decreased the Little Theatre community’s dependence on

British and American plays.

Education through competition

When Vere Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, arrived in Canada in 1931 as the newly appointed

Governor General, he hoped to find a vibrant theatre industry. He did find an active theatre in his new home province of Ontario, but one of amateurs and not of professionals as he had expected.

In Love and Whisky: The Story of the Dominion Drama Festival, Betty Lee summarizes the status of Canadian theatre at the time of Bessborough’s arrival: “[p]lays produced in Canada by

Canadians, in fact, were generally equated with recreational activity. The grubby work of professional theatre was being handled - very much like garbage disposal - by paid outsiders.”182

Bessborough was both a fan and a practitioner of the theatre, and amateur dramatics were not alien to him; his home in Hampshire “boasted the best-equipped private playhouse in the

182 Lee 65. 115 kingdom. Even the toughest critics from the London newspapers were glad to accept invitations.”183 Once he visited some of Ontario’s Little Theatres and became convinced of their merit, he set in motion a plan for advancing the theatre by establishing a national competition.

Bessborough possessed the resources and power to accelerate the slow progress of Canadian theatre; “sound financing was thoroughly assured,” wrote a Globe journalist when the plan for the DDF was publicly announced - the “festival is to be no theoretical experiment dependent upon future public support.”184 Most professionalization or development strategies that had been put forward previously had no resources or concrete actions to back them up. Bessborough’s literal and figurative investment, and the resulting Dominion Drama Festival, was a major reason the Canadian theatre field increased in legitimacy, organization and cohesion during a decade of economic disparity.

Judging from his early correspondence with Vincent Massey,185 Bessborough’s plan for a national drama competition was arrived at almost immediately; it does not appear that many alternate plans were suggested. Yet, there were many other ways Bessborough could have chosen to advance Canadian theatre. A National Theatre, financial incentives for Canadian playwrights, the founding of a training institution: all of these prevalent professionalization strategies would have been possible with the aid of funding and organization. It is significant that the device Bessborough chose was a nation-wide competition. It was a less expensive option than other models, it seemed to support rather than interfere with the dramatic activity already happening, and, most importantly, it performed many of the same functions as a National

Theatre or pre-professional training institution would have. It also meant one undertaking for the entire country’s theatrical development, rather than several distinct regional ventures or one

183 Lee 83. 184 “National Drama Festival” 6. 185 Lee 86-7. 116 localized Ontario venture - though the DDF would ultimately spend much of its focus and efforts in Ontario.

By the early 1930s, competitions were already a common method in Ontario for encouraging theatrical development. The early 1910s had seen the Earl Grey amateur drama competition, and the DDF was alluded to as a continuation of the earlier competition’s tradition;

“Not since the time when the Earl Grey Trophy stimulated such keen competition among amateur dramatic societies in Canada has there been given such an incentive to the development of this aspect of our culture life”, proclaimed one Globe writer.186 Further examples of theatrical competitions can be found in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, most of which were original play contests created in an attempt to develop a national drama. The previously mentioned 1929-30 one-act play competition concluded in the publication of the winning works under the title Six Canadian Plays; the resulting volume received write-ups in The Globe and

Canadian Forum. This was the contest that required all plays to contain “an exterior northern setting” and the “mood or subject-matter [of] the paintings of artists whose work [the playwrights] considered genuinely Canadian in character”;187 as this example illustrates, contests could be useful tools for promoting a specific and patriotic theatrical aesthetic. The contest was created by Herman Voaden and was clearly intended to further his own proposal for a national theatrical style “in the mood of the Northern Ontario painters”,188 the Group of Seven. The press surrounding the contest frequently separated the winners from past attempts at Canadian playwriting, labelling former attempts or competitions as ‘un-Canadian’ since they did not include this set of criteria. There were few other competitions that gained the press of Voaden’s play contest, and most were soon overshadowed by the DDF.

186 “Prizes Suggested for One-Act Plays” 5. 187 “Genuine Canadian Drama” 21. 188 Hicks 158-59. 117

During a 1932 speech at the Brantford Drama League, Ontario’s Provincial Minister of

Public Welfare W.G. Martin stated, “I would like to see a national competition, or even an international and Empire-wide competition, sponsored by our great Canadian National

Exhibition. Why not encourage the culture of dramatic art through the medium of an international competition for one-act plays, open to men and women of amateur standing?”

Many recognized drama competitions as a useful format and tool for developing the skills and aesthetics of the Canadian theatre. The theatre competitions in this decade served a similar function as training institutions in professional fields: open to amateurs, with the intention of creating distinction in skills and aesthetics. The DDF is a prime example of a competition used to impart a particular set of practices and criteria for aesthetic excellence to a field of amateurs while also raising some of those amateurs above others. Drama competitions with sufficient media attention also offer the competition organizers a chance to publicize their vision for the future of Canadian theatre and to discourage undesirable techniques and styles. In 1933, the competition’s first year, critics recognized that the DDF was going to deliberately guide its competitors towards a specific set of practices. One Globe write-up lists all of the perks of participating: “Bodily poise and grace, good manners, artistic training, knowledge of history and literature and geography, with greater mastery of that ever marvellous instrument, the mother tongue, are among the many obvious points in which the individual is benefited by taking part in such a festival.”189 On a practical level, competitions are more quickly and cheaply established than training institutions; it is unsurprising that a field slowly moving towards professionalization and lacking in standardized training would see contests as a viable alternative.

189 “Dominion Drama Festival” 5. 118

Vincent Massey was brought in early during the planning stages of the Festival to guide its development. The correspondence between Massey and the other organizers includes many discarded proposals that are indicative of their goals for the Festival. In early drafts of the

DDF’s structure, Massey advocated for an emphasis on ‘declamation’:

I feel the declamation of dramatic verse would meet with general approval on the part of educational authorities and the general public whereas the drama has not yet been accepted as a factor in education. Apart from this, one is still conscious of the lingering Puritan traditions which regard the theatre with certain misgivings. I would suggest the dramatic competition during the first year on a conservative and limited basis, while declamation might be carried considerably further.190

While declamation was largely out of fashion by this point in twentieth-century Western actor training, the declamation of poems or monologues had previously been a staple of acting schools and was still commonly found among private drama lessons for youth in Ontario. This plan to include declamation and Massey’s concerns of ‘Puritan traditions’ indicate the conservative audiences he hoped to reach with this competition. Though discarded before the first round of competition took place, early proposals like declamation prizes demonstrate that the organizers’ intentions were rooted in pre-WWI theatrical practices and traditional theatrical training.

Whether his was an accurate assessment of public tastes or not, Massey’s perception was that

“educational authorities and the general public” were deeply invested in pre-war theatrical models – and this perception would mold and shape the festival.

Early suggestions of types of plays that would be allowed in the competition also indicate a desire to appeal to conservative audiences and to replicate a traditional theatrical education. While in practice the choice of scripts would be left up to the individual theatre groups, more rigid limitations were originally proposed, with “Bessborough suggest[ing] that a list of scenes or speeches from Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine and Moliere might be

190 Massey, quoted in Lee 90. 119 prepared”191 from which competition groups would have to choose. Massey agreed with

Bessborough about limiting groups to “Shakespeare or the French classics” and a list of approved Canadian plays.192 At an October 1932 meeting which invited representatives of little theatre groups and leagues from across the country to weigh in on the drama competition proposal, it was decided that the list of plays should be merely a suggestion rather than a strict limitation. The theatre practitioners at this meeting were far less concerned with conservative audiences than Massey was; they also stressed the possibility for the competition “to develop a national drama”, though, as Lee notes, no concrete plans were made at that point for actively encouraging original Canadian plays in the Festival.193 This lack of award or incentive for playwrights would be a point of contention throughout the first competition in 1933, until the

DDF established a prize the following year.194 The Little Theatre members invited to contribute to the DDF’s formation did steer the competition in a less traditional and conservative direction; however, that 1932 meeting indicates that few other sorts of dramatic groups were able to influence the Festival to such an extent. Bessborough’s speech at the 1932 meeting positions the

DDF plans squarely around the Little Theatre movement: “Now that the Little Theatre has gained so strong a foothold in this country, there is, without any doubt, a great opportunity for its development along national lines, with the ultimate objective of creating a national drama.”195

This speech shows the central position the Little Theatres had taken in the 1930s Ontario and

Canadian theatre.

Another question that emerged in the early correspondence amongst DDF organizers was who would be permitted to participate in and benefit from the festival. Osborne, brought into the

191 Lee 88. 192 Lee 92. 193 Lee 96-97. 194 Lee 122. 195 Quoted in Lee 95. 120 organizational process by Massey, seems to have been the first to ask, “Who is this competition for?” in his correspondence with other organizers.196 They discussed and decided that the official stance of the Festival was that it was for amateurs; however, when Osborne communicated this stance to the public, the actual distinction drawn between amateur and professional is ill-defined.

He offered different rules for different positions:

‘The DDF is for amateurs,’ Osborne later replied to enquirers. ‘There is no objection to the employment of a professional director by a group. As to the players, there would be an objection to a professional actor who is temporarily out of employment and who proposes to resume in the future. On the other hand, there is no objection to a person who has abandoned his profession permanently and is now engaged in another occupation.’ Professor James A. Roy of Queen’s University wondered worriedly if a group could use a professional make-up man and was told that if the man was indeed professional he could do the job, provided he was not paid.197

The potential involvement of professionals in the competition was left open, but the ways in which their involvement was regulated indicates in which positions DDF organizers expected a professional would most unfairly benefit a production. The strictest limitations were made in the realm of the cast; use of a working professional actor in the cast was barred, even if they were unpaid. This is symptomatic of the importance the festival and its adjudicators would put on acting. Professional directors were allowed, for which no specific reason is given. Certainly directors often take on the task of training less experienced company members, and this presumably fit in with the festival’s objectives.

As illustrated by these examples of early proposals, the DDF’s design could have been even more old-fashioned than it eventually was; however, the plans for choosing adjudicators followed an opposite path, becoming increasingly traditional and colonial as the first year of the festival approached. Though Massey had suggested that “[a]djudication should be left to local

196 Quoted in Lee 103. 197 Lee 103. 121 people to find in the personnel of experienced dramatic groups”,198 for the first year the adjudicator of the competition finals was actor and producer Rupert Harvey who was picked by

Bessborough himself from among his British theatre contacts. Regional adjudicators were

Canadians for the first competition and were chosen by the DDF committee. The choice of

European adjudicators was never specified as a strict rule. However, the persistence of this tradition demonstrates the festival’s goals, cultural biases, and the type of theatrical training it was offering its competitors. In 1937 Michel St-Denis was the first non-British adjudicator for the finals, which was noted by Osborne as a break from the established practice: “[w]e seek as great a variety as possible of judges so that we can give greater scope to our groups. […] It forces groups to secure something new in their presentations.”199 Despite Osborne’s claims of offering competitors a “greater scope” of dramatic backgrounds in their adjudication, a choice from the French theatre was still in line with the Festival’s European theatrical preferences. As well, the regional adjudicator for 1937 was still British, the Festival having abandoned the use of

Canadian regional adjudicators after its first year. The DDF would continue using adjudicators from either Britain or France for its Finals until after WWII. These early adjudicators ensured that largely untrained theatre artists and audiences would be students of British and occasionally

French dramatic practices and aesthetics.

The reception of the festival’s use of mostly British adjudicators was mixed. Some critics praised the adjudicators for enforcing more rigorous quality standards within a community that lacked training. One 1933 Globe article detailing the first Ottawa finals praises Harvey’s adjudication for discouraging clichéd play choices common in the Little Theatres:

Some interesting inferences may be drawn from his decisions at Ottawa. Hackneyed Little Theatre commonplaces like “The £12 Look,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” “The

198 Lee 92. 199 Osborne quoted in “Michael St. Denis Adjudicator for Dominion Drama Festival Finals” 12. 122

Valiant,” and “Outward Bound,” which are worked to death year after year, seldom seem to carry off the highest awards. Novelty, originality and imagination seem to count for more, and Mr. Harvey evidently set great store by clever directing, lighting, settings, etc.200

Even in this praise of the adjudicator’s choices, it is implied that his choices were in opposition with local popular tastes – that he was correcting the artistic preferences of the Little Theatres and their audiences. In the same article, a very clear distinction is made between what audiences enjoy and what the adjudicator prefers. The writer says about one competition production that

“[t]his is an adjudicator’s play rather than a spectator’s play, in that it scores fat percentages by technical qualities which do not appeal to the average audience.” The writer makes the distinction essentially between ‘high art’ that pleases cultural elites and that which might please the larger population – artistic vs commercial, in other words. This commentary, though part of a larger cultural discourse, also implies skills and techniques growing specialized so that only experts in the field may properly evaluate them. Increasingly specialized skills indicate the growing distance between different levels of theatre creators, widened as the purpose of many

Ontario theatres became less social and more focused on quality production. In another Globe article on Harvey, the writer states that the “adjudicator gave deep offence in several quarters by neglecting his duties in order to essay the role of universal enlightener”201 before admitting that

“the Central Committee is entitled to bring over anyone it chooses, since he who pays the piper may call the tune.” The committee, having provided the funds and organization for the event, gets to pick ‘the tune’ - in other words, gets to choose what theatre is lauded and what is chastised.

200 “Dominion Drama Festival” 5. 201 “Drama Festival Considered” 10. 123

Though a nation-wide initiative, the DDF proved an especially effective tool for developing the aesthetic coherence and boundaries the Ontario theatre landscape through the

Festival’s logistical structure, its promotion of a specific set of aesthetic tastes, and its curated social functions. The social events of the festival finals were as well attended as the performances, and entrants could sense their inclusion or exclusion by the community at these functions as well as in their adjudication. Groups producing political theatre, non-traditional styles, or plays not in English or French were met with resistance and confusion at the DDF.

These groups did not fit into the marking scheme of the festival, which prioritized traditional acting and directing techniques over innovation, content, and design. Malcolm Morley was the

British regional adjudicator for the 1935 Festival. One of the entries with which he was presented was a segment of Voaden’s Hill-land, which epitomized the Symphonic Expressionist style. “I find difficulty in adjudicating this play,” starts Morley in the written comments sent to Voaden after the Festival; “Hill-land’s experimental nature proved an obstacle when it comes to fitting it with an adjudication score-sheet.” In his series of articles on the Festival for Saturday Night,

Morley had space to expand publicly on his impressions of Voaden’s entry: “my emotional response was continually being halted as the mediums of expression altered on the stage, or as one of them dominated for the time being over the others.” Morley’s writing on Hill-land also repeatedly indicates that for him the production did not fall into the category of theatre; his sentiments bring to mind Cochrane’s concept of amateur or ‘bad’ theatre essentially becoming

‘not-theatre.’ As a theatre field develops, not only does its aesthetic criteria become more specific and ingrained - so too does its basic, definitional criteria for inclusion. Morley’s criticisms of Hill-land were aesthetic and definitional, and so he concluded that the production’s

“main merits were outside the scope of what was ostensibly a Drama Festival.” Most media 124 simply recounted Morley’s adjudication rather than commenting upon it, though previously

Lawrence Mason had complained about an adjudicator’s dismissal of another Voaden entry: “our national drama festival does not wish to close the books with the year 1900, refusing any consideration to 20th century stagecraft.”202 The festival’s lack of artistic engagement with

Symphonic Expressions largely went unchallenged, despite Voaden being a known theatre educator and practitioner within Ontario. It was the marking scheme that was repeatedly blamed in the adjudicator’s comments for its inability to engage with Voaden’s work, rather than the festival that designed that scheme.

The Workers’ Theatre and later the Theatre of Action also met with a lukewarm reception at the DDF. Their engagement with social issues was perceived to be out of place at the competition. At the 1939 Ontario Central regionals, The Globe's write-up of the competition includes the following reaction from the regional adjudicator, Skillan, to Theatre of Action's Life and Death of an American: “The work of the producer (Daniel Mann) and the team work of the actors deserve commendation. [...] The author, unfortunately, has offered difficulties to them by making the scenes too episodic, too short, and too frequent. The result is that the symbolic work swamped the production’.”203 Short, episodic scenes were characteristic of many of the Theatre of Action’s chosen scripts, rooted in its members’ experience with agitprop and other non- realistic styles.

Workers’ Theatre and Theatre of Action member Toby Gordon Ryan, in her memoirs

Stage Left, recounts her journey through the 1937 DDF with the production Bury the Dead. Their reception at the regional festival was quite positive, and they moved on to the Finals. There, the

Finals’ adjudicator St. Denis is quoted in the Ottawa Journal as saying “I think it is essential that

202 Quoted in Lee 121. 203 “Best Canadian Play” 17. 125 we do not become confused over a play written to support an idea, and dramatic art.”204 Similar to the critiques lodged by Morley towards Hill-land, the major issue seems to be with the categorization of the piece rather than any particular production elements: the adjudicator defined propagandist art as something other than dramatic art. Ryan notes a similar reaction given to other groups that attempted to enter socially-engaged pieces: “Bury the Dead, Relief and

Secret all played at the Dominion Drama Festival finals in 1937. Those three plays reflected very well the desperate times in the world. Yet, at the end, both Lord Tweedsmuir and Michel St.

Denis made strong pleas in their conclusion remarks for more comedy and less gloom at the festivals.”205 As Ryan notes here, the Workers’ Theatre sought to address the economic hardships of many Canadians during the Depression era, while the DDF discouraged this direct engagement with “gloom” and social issues. Both socially and through adjudication, the Festival reinforced its aesthetic criteria and political conservatism. The response from the DDF adjudicators was also very likely influenced by class loyalties, as the Worker’s Theatre and similar groups often bypassed typical middle class theatre-goers and instead sought out working class audiences.

The numerous Ontario immigrant communities active in the 1930s, most operating in their native languages, went unrepresented at the Dominion Drama Festival and interacted very little with Anglo-Ontario theatres. The story of these immigrant theatre groups and traditions intersects very little with the professionalization of Ontario’s English-speaking theatre, due to the lack of professed professional ambitions within these groups and the developing exclusionary boundaries of the rest of the province’s theatre. There is one example in this decade of several immigrant cultural groups participating alongside Anglophone theatre in a competitive arts

204 Quoted in Ryan 129. 205 Ryan 131. 126 festival in Quebec. The Montreal Progressive Arts Club, an English-speaking organization, produced the festival with the intention of curating a diverse line-up of performers. Poet Dorothy

Livesay was put in charge of inviting groups; she recounts, “One of the tasks I was given at the time was to help create an ethnic festival of working class plays and songs. This meant contacting Ukrainian, Russian, Latvian, Swedish, Finnish and French labour organizations and getting them to send their singers, dancers and actors in competition to the festival.”206 What exactly is meant by ‘competition’ in Livesay’s recollection is unclear, as are the criteria by which this competition would be judged. Whatever structure that festival took, Filewod writes in

Committing Theatre that the diversity “dazzled activists who were more familiar with the contained, barely expressed theatricalities of an Anglophone Canadian culture that had not yet learned to accommodate an emergent multiculturalism”;207 the collaboration between Anglo-

Quebec and immigrant performance groups was clearly uncommon. It does not appear as though this sort of collaboration carried over into Ontario theatre. While the DDF offered prizes for best productions in English and in French, there are no recorded suggestions from festival organizers that they include productions in other languages. This absence speaks to the specific colonial framework within which the DDF was operating. Additionally, many of the early suggestions for the Festival’s organization, particularly Massey’s, exhibit cultural anxiety: anxiety that theatre would not be accepted by the conservative Ontario population and that the Festival would not seem legitimate or worthwhile. This anxiety led to particularly safe choices on the part of the committee, based on the theatrical models most familiar and trustworthy to them; in the committee’s view, to veer too far from established traditions would have risked the Festival’s legitimacy.

206 Livesay quoted in Filewod 108. 207 Filewod 109. 127

As a seemingly national institution, the DDF faced many of the problems that less overtly plagued the ever-hypothetical national dramatic style model: it was logistically difficult to represent the whole country, and in failing to do so, it over-represented Ontario. Many groups felt excluded from the DDF for logistical, geographical, and financial reasons. During the early years of the festival, the finals were always held in Ottawa, which meant groups from the Eastern and Western provinces were less represented than those from the centre of the country. There was also an advantage for groups whose members came from a higher socio-economic background and so had more money available for travel. Critics and participants complained openly that companies from Ontario were given an unfair advantage by being nearer to the location of the Finals; a 1934 Globe reviewer notes, “one contestant only, a Hart House entry, was granted space in the printed program for an advertisement praising and interpreting its production. Surely all productions, or none, should have the advantage of such expository

‘special pleading’.”208 Due to its large number of drama groups, Ontario was broken into more regions than any other province and thus had a higher number of regional winners; between that, the easier travelling distance for Ontario entries and the prominence Hart House had already gained in the Little Theatre community, the province was always over-represented in the competition finals. This problem persisted through the first several years of the Festival. Critic

Roly Young, in his regular Globe column “Rambling with Roly,” commented on the issue in

1937, the fifth year of the Festival:

there is no good or sufficient reason why the finals should not be held in a different part of the Dominion every year. I again repeat that if the purpose of the festival is to promote and encourage stage work, then the people of Victoria and of Halifax are just as entitled to see the country’s best in action as are the socialites of Ottawa.209

208 “Drama Festival Considered” 10. 209 Young 8. 128

Young emphasizes that the benefits of the festival are not just for the competitors, but also for audiences and the groups that did not make it to the finals: “If they could see the winners in action they would learn something and from that example would doubtless be able to correct many of their own short-comings.” For the first six years of the festival, organizers continued to hold the finals in Ottawa; since they had been held there in the past, and many of the organizers lived in Ontario, they maintained it was always simplest to hold them there again. While holding the Finals in Ottawa was difficult for groups from the other provinces, it was conducive to the

Ontario theatre’s development. Not only were more finalists from Ontario able to attend and receive the benefit of adjudication, but more non-winning groups could afford to see the adjudication; this would have allowed far more Ontario theatre groups exposure to the increasingly-established aesthetic criteria of the Festival, while the numerous groups from other provinces would have remained less unified in their aesthetics and practices.

As a training device for developing the theatre, the DDF proved more effective than anything attempted previously in Ontario. John Coulter writes in his 1938 article, “I remember that the two runners-up who tried for second place in the 1937 finals as adjudicated by Michel

Saint-Denis, gave finished performances that would have passed the professional standards of

Broadway or Shaftesbury Avenue.”210 Critical assessments generally showed that by the end of the decade, the festival had succeeded in raising the potential for quality of the country’s Little

Theatre groups. In addition to its success as a training tool, the Festival was also a force of organization, infrastructure, and networking. Upon its formation, the DDF was suddenly the most organized, publicized, and widespread Canadian theatre organization. It was able to quickly define and reinforce practices and aesthetic distinction across the country, most effectively in

Ontario.

210 Coulter 121. 129

There were several persistent critiques of the DDF as a device for theatrical development.

For the first year of the festival, there were many complaints that it was not encouraging the writing of new plays. B.K. Sandwell, writing for Saturday Night, states that the purpose of the

Little Theatre Movement was to “provide means for the production of Canadian drama.” The festival, he argued, was not truly developing the Little Theatres or the Canadian theatre community as it offered no incentive for Canadian playwrights: “It is unfortunate but inevitable that this should be a function which cannot receive much encouragement from competition events such as the Dominion Drama Festival now in progress all over Canada.”211 Sandwell also goes on to critique the Festival for placing its emphasis on adjudicating the work of the actors and producers at the expense of other elements of the theatre. The Globe’s Lawrence Mason also critiqued the first Festival’s lack of an award for playwriting: “the present writer feels that our

Canadian Dramatic Festival, at least, would suffer a very serious loss if it failed to include in its activities some strong encouragement for the writing of original plays.”212 The persistence of this particular complaint and the relative speed with which the Festival organizers remedied the situation illustrates the popularity of the playwright-centric model. While the festival was created to develop and instruct Canadian amateur theatres, it was not immune to the values and tastes that had already developed in communities and the professionalization discourse across the country.

Still, the overwhelming cultural influence on the festival was British; its idea of quality theatre was that of pre-WWI professional models. Sandwell critiqued the festival for reinforcing

British and, to a lesser extent, American models of professionalism; he claimed that the “easiest of all ways to get a high mark in these competitions is, undoubtedly, to select a play which has

211 Sandwell “Little Theatre Festival” 19. 212 “Music in the Home” 5. 130 been well performed in one’s own city by visiting professionals quite recently, and to aim at an exact copy of their performance.”213 While the suggestion that groups mimic recent touring productions to win is presumably not what the festival organizers had intended, the critique was the clear result of the festival’s practice of instilling foreign professional theatre traditions in its participants. Sandwell’s critique also highlights another major flaw with the DDF as an educational institution for Canadian theatre practitioners: the lack of sustained training and regular guidance. Groups were adjudicated once a year (twice, if they were lucky enough to move on to the finals) and then learned on their own to fix the criticisms they had received. As

Young jokes in his assessment of the Festival, the competitors are subjected yearly to the whirlwind of competition and social events before they “return home to oblivion.”214 It is understandable, if unfortunate, that the groups would look to the few professional touring productions they saw for clues on how to achieve a high quality of production.

The DDF was a professionalizing force in a pre-professional field, defining and reinforcing aesthetic standards, establishing boundaries, and providing an organizational network. It was founded at a time when the Canadian theatre, and Ontario theatre in particular, was attempting to distinguish itself from pre-war theatrical models; however, everything from its name to its adjudication process was from the past. As such, in Ontario the DDF developed the theatre community in some ways while holding it back in others. Though the festival sometimes adopted changes from theatre communities or the media, it continued to reinforce traditional ideas of professional theatre – ideas that the public would still need to move past before it could accept a Canadian company as professional.

213 Sandwell “Little Theatre Festival” 19. 214 Young 8. 131

The Training Barrier

While its lack of standardized education and certification has caused professional theatre to be frequently omitted from scholarship on the professions, theatre fields can use training as a means of ensuring professional exclusivity. As previously noted, for a field to professionalize it must become more exclusive than it was as an amateur occupation. Training barriers help to prohibit those who cannot sufficiently master the necessary skills and/or cannot afford adequate schooling; the latter specially often prevents those from lower social-economic backgrounds from entering professions which require years of specialized training. These barriers additionally serve to promise the public a certain level of skill, thus raising public opinion of the profession.

Training is certainly an asset in Canada's current professional theatre industry as a means of acquiring skills, mastering contemporary aesthetics, and networking; however, there is little to legally prevent untrained theatre artists from applying and being hired for professional work. In

1930s Ontario, even that modest level of obstruction in access to the theatre without training was not yet established, as there was little opportunity for advanced training. Classes in acting, declamation, dancing and singing were available, but largely only in urban centres and the majority of these were designed for amateur youth (e.g. the Margaret Eaton school in Toronto); these classes prepared students for public speaking and recitals of monologues and short scenes, rather than productions of full-length plays. Learning opportunities for adults were sporadically available; these were frequently singular courses or private lessons, with no achievable diploma or degree.

There were surprisingly few artists or critics who expressed the desire to establish dedicated theatre training centres, relative to the frequent calls for a National Theatre. It would have seemed over-zealous to found a school when the graduates would have no professional 132 opportunities in their own country, and the Dominion Drama Festival seemed to be doing a fine job at educating young theatre practitioners. Still, some organizations did take steps towards establishing training opportunities for aspiring theatre artists. In 1937, plans were made at a meeting of the Western Ontario Drama League to bring over a British theatre coach for the purposes of instruction: “It may just be that during part of the time we might run a drama school in Western Ontario,” said a meeting attendee, quoted in The Globe; “A great deal depends on our being able to obtain a suitable man, and as soon as we have secured him, we expect to have little difficulty in utilizing his presence most advantageously.”215 There is no record, however, of whether this plan was actually carried out. Other companies took it upon themselves to bring in professional directors for their members to work under and learn from. The Theatre of Action in

Toronto brought in a professional director from the U.S. to help train its members and direct its productions; the Finnish arts community in Toronto “had two full-time directors, one in each of their halls on Bay Street.”216 These examples, though not uncommon, were in the minority – the majority of Ontario companies could not afford to hire professional directors and so relied on their own on-the-job experience and occasional volunteering professionals to train their members.

A major reason for the low priority placed on establishing training schools in the Ontario theatre would have been that this model of theatre education was a fairly new phenomenon.

Many Western countries would start to move away from the apprenticeship model throughout the early twentieth-century, but prior to WWI it was the most common method of training aspiring theatre artists. In the U.K., the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) was established in 1904; this would have been the most well-known image of a professional training

215 Quoted in Mason, “W.O.D.L. Meeting” 5. 216 Pucci 37. 133 school for Canadians, with RADA on occasion offering scholarships to promising young

Canadian actors. A 1935 article in The Globe entitled “Stage Study in London: Training at the

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, Described for The Globe by Miss Matthews, Just

Returned from Eighteen Months’ Work There” details the style of training acting students receive at RADA, from the point of view of a Miss Matthews, whose exact involvement or area of study with RADA is not made clear. Matthews admits that the RADA example is fairly new, relative to Britain’s professional theatre industry: “Before the days of dramatic academies, in order to go on the stage it was necessary to join a touring company, and so gain one’s experience at the expense of the audience. Some people will still claim that the old way is the best.”217 The article emphasizes how RADA had established itself as a gateway to the professional industry in its four decades of existence; Matthews notes that “it is impossible to see a play or film in

London, in which there is not at least one graduate of the R.A.D.A.” Still, the school was far from the absolute barrier to entry into the British professional theatre that training institutions are in the standard professions. While the very fact that Matthews's article was solicited and published suggests an interest in this model of theatrical training on the part of The Globe's readers, there is no framing of the article (by Matthews or the editor) as a proposal for a potential model for Canadian theatrical training. The only connection made in the article between Ontario theatre and RADA is that Elaine Wodson, a “clever young Toronto actress,” is stated to have recently studied there. The concern over the emigration of theatrical talent from Canada to the

U.S. or U.K. is also not addressed in The Globe article. As a model, RADA would have been a less enshrined aspect of British theatre than many other traditions Canada had inherited. As

Matthews’s article illustrates, institutionalized theatrical training would have seemed a fairly recent idea for Canadians looking to the theatre industries of other countries for guidance.

217 “Stage Study in London” 20. 134

Some drama courses, both academic and practical, were offered independently or by universities; the post-secondary courses available were usually either one-time classes or part of the Literature department. It seems 1934 and 1935 were especially active years for theatre courses, particularly during the summer sessions; this increase was most likely due to the boost in interest in the theatre due to the recent founding of the DDF. “Edgar Stone gave a course of lectures on ‘Dynamics in Acting’ at the studio theatre of the Unnamed Players in Toronto”218 during the summer of 1934; Melville C. Keay is also noted to have conducted a general drama course that summer elsewhere in Ontario. Herman Voaden taught classes in playwriting at the

Central High School of Commerce, and in Play Production at Queen's University; playwriting workshops and other summer drama courses were offered by theatre groups such as the

Shakespeare Society and the Unnamed Players. During the summer of 1935, Mr E.G. Sterndale

Bennet, “well-known Director of the Toronto Masquers” was noted as “offering a practical training course in the stage technique of acting.”219 In 1938, the University of Toronto offered a summer course in “The Art of the Theatre” which was marketed towards “any one interested in play-production and acting.”220 As evidenced by these examples, most 1930s university theatre courses were offered during summer sessions and were not incorporated into any department’s regular curriculum. Outside of Ontario, the most significant theatre training opportunity of the

1930s was the Banff School of Drama, which was founded in 1933 as an extension of the

University of Calgary after receiving a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. The school began with a two-week course in drama, with 190 students enrolled; in following years it would expand to include classes in playwriting, music and the visual arts (the school was renamed the Banff

218 “Unfinished Business III” 18. 219 “Brief Comment” 5. 220 “This and That” 12. 135

School of Fine Arts).221 Despite the significance of the Banff School, surprisingly little writing can be found on the effect of this training on Ontario theatre practitioners during the 1930s. In

Ontario there were plenty of learning opportunities for those that lived near Toronto, or had the financial resources to travel, but to piece together a cohesive theatrical education would have taken extensive time and effort.

The theatrical training available for Ontario practitioners throughout the 1930s was not prevalent or standardized enough for it to become a significant barrier for those seeking to access the centre of the developing community, nor did many critics or artists call for an institution like the RADA. However, the unorganized and sporadic nature of the theatre training available created its own sort of barrier: only those with the time and money to seek out these disparate courses, private training, and opportunities abroad were able to cobble together enough of a theatrical education to be seen as ‘educated’ by their communities. The ongoing Depression meant that even fewer people were able to afford private or foreign training than may have sought it out otherwise. Voaden is one example of this; he focused his education at Queen’s

University and the University of Chicago on the modern theatre, and he travelled extensively throughout Europe to unofficially continue his studies. Amelia Hall, who would become co- director of the Canadian Repertory Theatre after WWII, saved up her teacher’s wages in order to afford private lessons and to train in the U.S.; she writes in her memoirs, “In those days one paid, and paid a lot, to be an apprentice.”222 The training from which Voaden and Hall benefitted was not an option for those without a reasonable income and without the option to travel for months at a time.

221 Witherspoon 16. 222 Hall 53. 136

For the aspiring playwright, the educational opportunities were almost entirely limited to feedback from reviews and competitions. One 1934 Globe article made specific recommendations for the style of training new playwrights should receive; the writer criticizes the ‘learn by doing’ approach, and endorses instead a learning environment apart from production. He argues that “native playwrights are better served by summer schools and

‘workshops’ than by public performances of their plays.”223 The writer advocates for the “expert guidance” found in a school or workshop environment, and contends that on-the-job training often results in “the premature performance of a new play which often fails to please, or to please very effectually, only because its latent possibilities have not been properly developed and its weaknesses amended […] before being exposed to the public gaze.” A similar sentiment can be found in the aforementioned RADA article, published less than a year later in The Globe;

Matthews states that the 'old way' of training in an active theatre, rather than in a sequestered school environment, is to “gain one’s experience at the expense of the audience.” In both articles, the premature meeting of artist and audience is seen as potentially detrimental to either or both.

Thus, a professionalizing artistic field may require training institutions in order to hide the developing apprentices from the public gaze.

Less expensive theatrical instruction was offered in writing, through short articles or full- length books. The latter were usually aimed at beginners or were intended to guide small amateur dramatic groups, such as Wayne Campbell's Amateur Acting and Play Producing. In a Canadian

Forum review of Campbell's book, R. Keith Hicks writes, “It is well planned and never loses sight of the youthful beginner.” For theatre artists with more experience, short pedagogical articles aimed at proficient actors, playwrights or directors also appear in newspapers and magazines during this period. These are at times difficult to distinguish from ordinary theatre

223 “Unfinished Business III” 18. 137 criticism; production reviews are often prescriptive. However, certain articles were designed to be instructive; these were pieces directed at no one production and many of them used the adjudication comments at the DDF as a starting point from which to discuss and reinforce aesthetic criteria. One such piece from a 1931 issue of Canadian Forum was a long diatribe on how the public was evaluating young actors and how instead these actors should be educated.

Writes the author,

What is the most usual complaint levelled against an actor? -‘He does not appear natural.’ And the usual compliment: ‘He didn’t seem to be acting at all.’ Is that all there is to it? So we concentrate on stage photography, and forget to have regard first to the significant (if there be any) of what the actor does, which exists in its own right apart from all questions of realism.224

This article, entitled “The Actor’s Technique,” begins as more of a descriptive complaint than as an instructive tool. However, the writer becomes more prescriptive as he continues, recommending that we “let our advice to the young actor be: ‘I want you to act so that you look as though you were acting, subject to the laws of acting, and don’t try to deceive my eye or my mind.’”225 The writer does not cite any particular inspiration for the style of acting he is suggesting, so the young actor would be hard-pressed to follow-up with any training in this style.

However, it is significant that the writer phrases this as “advice”; his stated intention is to provide practical instruction to young actors and to the teachers of young actors. Articles like

“The Actor’s Technique” could be found in newspapers and magazines of the 1930s with increasing regularity as critics began to expect higher levels of skill from non-professional actors. As this heightened skill was more expected, it became harder for amateur actors to meet it due to the difficult of combining disparate and uneven training opportunities. As the aesthetic

224 “The Actor’s Technique” 118. 225 “The Actor’s Technique” 118. 138 criteria in Ontario theatre was becoming more codified during the 1930s, theatre education was not becoming more standardized at the same rate.

As the Little Theatres emerged as the centre of Ontario theatre, they further controlled access to community acceptance and distinction by owning a major means of training: themselves. As previously noted, Little Theatres were often referred to as ‘training grounds’; participation in the Little Theatres was considered an especially good theatrical education in

1930s Ontario. This apprenticeship model would have been considered common and although this training was non-standardized, it was recognized by the community and by prominent figures viewing the community from without. Provincial Minister of Public Welfare W.G.

Martin, in a 1932 speech at the Brant Theatre, states that the “dramatic training in schools, churches and clubs” should already at this point be sufficient “to provide the Dominion with a splendid field of opportunity to make a worthwhile contribution”226 to the dramatic arts.

Bessborough, too, once he got over his shock at the lack of a professional theatre industry in

Canada, praised the skill that the Little Theatres had managed to gain simply through frequent practice.227 The Little Theatres of Ontario also boasted a few experienced directors, some even referred to as professionals, who took young practitioners under their wings; these were often figures who had practiced professionally elsewhere in the past, or British or American directors who had emigrated to Canada. For example, in Canadian Forum W.S. Milne emphasized

Denison's success as a playwright as a product of his time spent with experienced practitioners at

Hart House: “[Denison] received a training in stagecraft and play-production under Roy

Mitchell; he played parts himself; he helped to rehearse his own plays; he shaped and modified

226 “Prizes Suggested for One-Act Plays” 5. 227 Lee 85. 139 them in rehearsal.”228 Mitchell was one of the few practitioners within Canadian theatre who was frequently referred to and treated as a professional. Several aspects of Mitchell’s background led to this designation: he had previously worked as a professional journalist; he was involved with respected arts institutions (he was founder of the Arts and Letters Club and the first Artistic

Director of Hart House); in the 1910s, he had trained and worked in the New York theatre for three years. In the media Mitchell was called professional and thus seemed qualified to train those working under him. The examples of Mitchell and Denison demonstrate that the few

Ontarians called ‘theatre professionals’ usually worked in the Little Theatres; they also demonstrate that being able to connect your training and career to the U.S. or U.K. was immensely helpful in raising your legitimacy. As I will discuss further in Chapter Four, this on- the-job training often proved sufficient for the professional opportunities available post-WWII.

Those with on-the-job training from Little Theatres and similar types of companies would find their access to the professional theatre and radio worlds easier after the war.

Community Networks

The establishment of a professional association is a vital step in most professionalization processes; these associations allow for official membership, as well as inter-field communication and dissemination of information. In the 1930s, numerous networks were formed that affected

Ontario theatre, ranging from small collectives of local companies to national systems connecting Little Theatres across the country. These community networks served many of the same functions as professional associations: they fostered identity among practitioners, they offered means of communication by which to share information and resources, and they created a sense of legitimacy and exclusivity. These networks were often built using pre-existing

228 Milne 64. 140 connections based on class or political communication conduits, such as arts and culture publications intended for the demographic of the English-speaking middle and upper class. The most prolific community networks of the 1930s include competitions (most notably the

Dominion Drama Festival), magazine columns, newsletters, and drama leagues; many of these were national but, as with the example of the DDF, Ontario theatre was usually over-represented.

Canadian Forum began publishing “The Little Theatres” column in January of 1929, which was replaced by a general “Stage and Screen” column in March of 1931. Though the column was short-lived, the fact that it was called “The Little Theatres” is indicative of the increasing significance of the Little Theatre model as it came to epitomize Canadian-created, non-professionalized theatre. The initial aim of “The Little Theatres” column was to be a community defining, building and educating device. It was designed to increase communication and mutual learning amongst the various groups across Canada, as stated in its first appearance in Canadian Forum:

Is there the fullest value in the minutes of performances by amateurs in various localities, or is there room for discussion arising out of these minutes? We believe there is. Play lists are not in themselves inspiring, though invaluable as a matter of record, and the summary of a year’s dramatic activity throughout the Dominion would provide useful data for directors and others in travail over the choice of plays, but would need to be supplemented. It would need to be supplemented so as to answer two questions: (i) what difficulties did the producer encounter in the material he had to work with, and (ii) how did the sort of audience, that that audience was, react to the play?

[...]

Did it please? Was it difficult in rehearsal? And in general how do the various Little Theatre audiences take to serious stuff? Further questions are of common interest: how does the triple bill compare, in production-effort and drawing power with the full length play? What about Shakespeare for filling the house? What constitutes a Canadian play, and when produced what reception is given to it? - and so forth.229

229 Hicks “The Little Theatres” 145. 141

Hicks solicited updates from Little Theatres across Canada on their company operations and productions, and many theatres did contribute their experiences. The most common topic of discussion was the audience; most Little Theatres were eager for any information about audience tastes, increasing attendance, and setting ticket prices. The short life of the column means that it was not an ongoing community-building device throughout the 1930s, but it did increase awareness of and connection between the Little Theatres across the country before the DDF was founded; its frequent focus on audiences also shows that the Little Theatres were beginning to think of themselves less as social activity groups and more as significant cultural producers. The

Dominion Drama Festival remains the most notable theatre community network created during the 1930s. The final DDF competition each year was the only time theatre groups from across the country had a large-scale occasion on which to view each other; regional competitions also allowed for networking and mutual recognition among groups operating within the same province. Theatrical styles of specific localities began to compete with the aesthetic criteria of the DDF adjudicators, and thus the aesthetics reinforced by the competition began to be disseminated across the nation-wide community network.

There were a few foreign models for amateur associations that influenced small networks in Ontario. The British Drama League and its Scottish counterpart, the Scottish Community

Drama Association, were both cited in the media as desirable models and were occasionally mimicked in practice on a small scale. In one 1933 Globe article, the writer makes a strong case for the emulation of the Scottish Association over the British Drama League (BDL):

Canada has much more to gain by following the Scottish Community Drama Association than by following the British Drama League; because the B.D.L. was designed for a country which already possesses a great and successfully functioning drama, while the SCDA was designed for a new country in the dramatic field, which wishes to create a develop a National drama of its own. Obviously, Canada falls in the same class with Scotland, not with England, in its struggle for a National Drama; so, 142

while cherishing to the full our priceless heritage of English drama, we shall be wise if we turn to Scotland for guidance in our effort to build our own theatre.230

The BDL was the more well-known model, however, and numerous similarly named and organized leagues would form in Ontario, such as the Western Ontario Drama League and the

Brantford Drama League. The model represented by the BDL and the SCDA is focused on amateur activity and emphasizes the value of amateur theatre as a ‘social need’ rather than a cultural product. However, the BDL also concerned itself with “both the professional and the amateur aspects”231 of the theatre, and focused its training largely on dedicated amateur adult artists. Both the British and Scottish leagues were nation-wide, connecting amateur drama groups with each other and with resources for education of their members. Logistically, the BDL was organized as a network of affiliated theatre groups, with an annual National Festival of

Community Drama and centralized resources available to all members. These resources, including the League Library and the Training Department, represented the major self-stated goals of the League: “To assist the development of the Art of the Theatre and its right relationship with the life of the Community.”232 A nation-wide league in Canada never did materialize; the DDF was serving essentially the same purpose while also demonstrating the logistical challenges that would meet a Canadian national league

Language, Class, and Political Barriers

Throughout the 1930s the Little Theatres and the DDF increasingly represented the centre of the amateur theatre in Canada, especially in Ontario where both were most prolific and active. The

DDF was frequently exclusionary based on the politics, class, or language of the entrants.

230 “Dominion Drama Festival.”“ The Globe. 2 Sept 1933: 5. 231 Browne 203. 232 Browne 204. 143

Politically active groups such as the Workers’ Theatre (and later, Theatre of Action) felt unwelcome socially and artistically. Many groups from outside of Ontario were unable to attend the finals due to a lack of travel funds. Entrants from Quebec often complained that adjudicators were chosen more for their understanding of English theatre; other non-Anglophone theatre saw little to no presence at the DDF, even from immigrant communities with active amateur theatres.

The DDF and the Little Theatre model were not designed to represent the whole spectrum of amateur theatre, but rather to reinforce a certain standard.

Those theatre groups that did not resemble the Little Theatres were more likely to be left out of the province’s emerging community dynamics, such as community networks. The media praised particular groups as ‘ideal’ Little Theatres. Hart House Theatre had long been seen as a pinnacle of achievement within the Canadian Little Theatre movement, due to its design innovations, productions of Canadian plays, and the superior acting talent it drew – not to mention its above-average facilities and the social capital of its patron family. Its productions were frequently referred to as ‘professional-quality” by reviewers. Another ideal Little Theatre was the Sarnia Drama League, as argued by Lawrence Mason: “The Sarnia Idea, then, is not the presentation of ‘amateur theatricals’ for profit or just for fun, as a pastime. It aims at remedying the drawbacks in the existing theatre situation, so far as professional companies and ‘the road’ are concerned; and beyond that, it aims at forwarding a National movement.”233 The model the

Sarnia Drama League represented was that of a literary theatre, hosting play-reading groups and producing lesser-known classics and works from the Abbey Theatre. The Ottawa Little Theatre and the London Little Theatre were also examples frequently cited in the community of successful Little Theatres for their technical skills and frequency of production. One particular

1934 article in Canadian Statesman exhibits the stratification of the Canadian theatre (with

233 Mason “The Sarnia Idea” 73. 144 special focus on Ontario theatres), placing the Little Theatres first, educational groups next, then social groups, and anything non-English speaking or political omitted entirely:

First there are widely known organizations such as Hart House Theatre, Winnipeg Little Theatre, The Ottawa Drama League, Saskatoon Little Theatre, Club, etc., also University College Institutes and High School dramatic groups, groups organized for recreation purposes, groups to employ the time of the unemployed, such as the Miracle Players of Toronto, groups organized for social benefit and cultural advantages and last but not least groups formed by church organizations, the most active in this class being the Anglican Young People, who have 47 branches in Ontario alone.234

These were the theatre models that were centred in Ontario theatre and they typified Little

Theatre values and artistic characteristics. While these were all amateur theatres, groups that strayed far from this model were generally seen as even more amateur and gained less widespread notice.

There was little interaction between the English-speaking theatres of Ontario and the theatre groups of the province’s immigrant communities. The Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and

Finnish communities had active theatres, but few made connections with the Little Theatres.

Maria Tippet describes these cultural groups as “islands unto themselves. Rarely mingling with or accepted into English-Canadian cultural groups, they existed largely for the entertainment of their own cultural groups and for the preservation of each group’s language, folk-ways, history, and literature.”235 Tippet’s description of the goals of these immigrant community theatres summarizes how they differed from English-speaking theatres, which were not as concerned with cultural preservation; it also hints at how they were perceived as different from English- speaking theatres, which were beginning to concern themselves more and more with artistic merit – something which immigrant groups were assumed to not prioritize. As certain spheres of

Ontario theatre began exhibiting characteristics of a field of cultural production, concerned with

234 “Newcastle Players Hold First Annual Banquet” 5. 235 Tippet 29. 145 reception and product, the immigrant community theatres were stable in their social-cultural and historical-cultural goals. The barrier between the mainstream Ontario theatre and the immigrant theatre communities was largely one created through silence and absence; immigrant theatre productions were not mentioned in the English newspapers or magazines, though foreign language productions could sometimes merit discussion if they were from famous touring companies. Immigrant theatre groups were not seen at the Dominion Drama Festival and its numerous accompanying social functions. The major barrier was, of course, language; the

English-theatres of Ontario made up the majority of the province’s theatres, and thus had little motivation to extend beyond their language’s sphere. However, artistic goals and class differences also kept the disparate communities from interacting with each other.

The immigrant community theatres, while varied in their aims, usually had two major goals in common: preservation of culture and entertainment. Wynnyckyj and Gagat in “Uciecha: a Repertory of Polish Plays” describe the escapist entertainment popular amongst Polish audiences: “The group of amateurs sought popular audiences with the great majority of their plays being one-act comedies, musicals, or both - geared to take members of the audience ‘out of themselves’ […]. Generally speaking, the repertoire was tailored to entertain rather than to engage social comment.”236 The popularity of comedies, light-hearted romances, and musicals is common across most of these communities; their theatre groups were catering to audiences’ tastes for cheerful and relaxing entertainment. For most of these immigrant communities, theatre was an excellent means of keeping their own cultural background alive; they had little reason to participate in the theatrical discourse or models towards a national dramatic style which had, at that time, no intention of including them. As Papp writes in “Hungarian Canadian Dramatic

Productions”, many members of the Hungarian community were “interested in the preservation

236 Wynnyckyj and Gagat 40. 146 of Hungarian culture and saw theatrical involvement as the best means to this end.”237 This strong desire to use theatre for cultural-preservation distinguishes the immigrant theatres from most of the English-speaking Ontario theatre communities, particularly the Little Theatres. The

Little Theatres were searching for a cultural identity rather than preserving one, and though not commercial themselves, immigrant theatre groups were far less opposed to commercial theatre than were the Little Theatres. Thus, the major cultural goals of the immigrant theatres were at odds with the aesthetic tastes and values of the Little Theatres.

As many new Canadians struggled financially, few theatre practitioners from immigrant communities could devote as much of their time to the theatre as a professional would. Pucci writes, in “Ethnic Theatre in Thunder Bay,” that most of the performers in these communities

“could not always commit sufficient time and effort to the learning of lines and parts after a long day of hard work”;238 most of these productions in pre-WWI immigrant theatre groups did not have the luxury of time for extensive on-the-job training. Certain signifiers of amateurism were necessities, such as the prompter in the Thunder Bay Ukrainian Theatres.239 Immigrants faced additional professional obstacles, such as the language barrier, that made even achieving access to the centre of Ontario theatre difficult. By and large, however, theatre practitioners emerging from the immigrant communities intended to remain amateur. Due to the lack of a professional theatre in Canada at this time, it can be safely assumed that most immigrants did not move there to make a career in the theatre; thus, their productions remained a social and cultural activity.

All this may make the distance between the immigrant theatre communities and the

English-speaking theatre community seem natural: the different communities had very different goals, after all. However, there was also much common ground to be found between them. While

237 Papp 33. 238 Papp 37. 239 Pucci 37. 147 the repertoires of immigrant theatres relied heavily on comedies and musicals, they were not limited to these genres; Finnish community theatre also “featured ambitious productions of

Shakespeare and Moliere”240 and other plays from the Western theatrical canon, chosen to further their own theatrical education. Little Theatres were also not the only ones to bring in theatrical professionals to add technique and polish to their productions; as previously noted, the

“Finnish community’s support for local theatre was reflected in the fact that they had two full- time directors.”241 Several immigrant communities in Ontario fostered their own playwrights as well and were prolific in producing their work, with the “Thunder Bay Finnish Canadian

Historical Society” boasting an archive of “over 400 copies of Finnish plays locally produced.”242 The disregard for immigrant drama by the rest of the Ontario theatre communities was not an unavoidable segregation; it was a mix of legitimate hurdles (such as the language barrier and some differing goals), a lack of English mainstream media attention, and the English- speaking theatre community’s increasingly exclusionary boundaries.

The separation of immigrant theatre in Ontario from the mainstream English-speaking theatre is intertwined with the other barriers to access based on class, income, and social capital.

Many of the immigrant communities were working class, composed of individuals and families that had recently moved to Ontario; they would have had few social connections or established family financial resources from which to draw. However, the class-related challenges with participating in English-Ontario theatre were not limited to recent immigrants. Many of those who drove the workers’ theatre were themselves upper-middle class, possessing the resources and education to pursue theatre and touring full time. Yet, their association with working class politics and their habit of seeking out working class audiences brought them into less frequent

240 Pucci 37. 241 Pucci 37. 242 Pucci 37. 148 encounters with the Little Theatres. As previously noted, the ability to gain adequate hands-on training in the theatre was not available to all; since there was little possibility of getting paid and training often meant travelling or expensive private lessons, disposable income and free time were extremely helpful for Ontario theatre practitioners. Participation in the DDF and the social networking opportunities it provided required time and money with which to travel to the competition locations. Successful Little Theatres often had a director or founder with social and financial capital, who could afford to donate a lot of their time, knowledge, and funds to the group’s productions. The professionalization of a field always excludes those with inadequate capital to pursue training and certification, but the promise of standardized pay once membership to the profession is achieved can alleviate some of the burden for the aspiring professional.

Within the Ontario landscape of the 1930s, not yet professionalized or a coherent province-wide community but beginning to develop standards for competence and aesthetic distinction, those who strove to rise to the top of their field had to do so with little hope of ever receiving remunerations. Thus, those who did achieve recognized excellence often possessed unique financial and social circumstances; those without the necessary circumstances had little means to seriously pursue mastery of theatrical skills and so remained in theatre groups perceived as less competent, in local social drama groups, or in their local cultural centres.

Public Perception

Historical accounts of 1930s Ontario theatre usually note the trend, continuing from the 1920s, of professional touring productions and stock companies diminishing in number until almost non- existent. In Scott’s “Professional Performers and Companies,” he states that “resident stock 149 virtually disappeared from the province”243 by the dawn of 1940. However, touring productions from the U.S. and U.K never disappeared completely from Ontario, though they were sparse throughout the 1930s. Pre-WWI models of professionalism remained prevalent in influence, if not in practice. While the model of a national dramatic style become more popular and patriotism rose during the interwar period, the influence of foreign professional theatre was still regularly noted in the media. In 1930 Lawrence Mason wrote an article for The Globe comparing Western

Little Theatres to those in Ontario; the article also touches on the state of Canadian Little

Theatres as a whole and their continuing competition from other countries and other media.

Mason cites “the invasion of Canada by Broadway plays” as still being “dangerous,” particularly in Ontario, and he describes “talkies” as fierce competition, though he remains confident that film will not “crush the need for genuine stage performances.”244 Mason confidently positions the Little Theatres as the emerging centre of Canadian theatre, predicting that they “can take an important place in the modern art world by concentrating on advanced production methods and the endless possibilities of the beautiful new ‘art of the theatre’,”245 even as he acknowledges the threat American professional theatre (particularly Broadway). A 1935 article in The Globe relates a speech given by visiting British actress Sybil Thorndike at Hart House, directed towards the Ontario theatre artists: “You have in your midst, she said, the power to do something which is not being done in this country at all. You have a research theatre, something which can delve and can move out into lands of freedom. The commercial theatre cannot leap in the dark as this theatre can.”246 Even when the comparison is complimentary, as in this example, the contrast reminds the community that Hart House is distinct from the professional theatre. Hart House and

243 Scott 51. 244 “Western Little Theatres” 19. 245 Mason 19. 246 “Among Ourselves” 13. 150 other prominent Little Theatres were rarely referred to as amateur; their high artistic quality and patriotic values made the designation ill-fitting. However, persistent models of foreign professional theatre would not allow the Little Theatres to be called professional. The most common rhetoric for the Little Theatres, used above by Thorndike, places them in an implied third category that was neither professional nor amateur.

Certain types of theatrical activity served to prepare Ontario critics and audiences for the post-WWII emergence of professional companies. Skilled Little Theatres raised the profile of their model, proving the viability of smaller-sized local theatres in a manner that would prove useful to many companies after the war. Outside of Toronto and other population centres, the summer theatre that emerged during this decade began to prime some Ontario audiences to accept small, local theatre companies as a major source of professional-quality entertainment. In

“Summer Theatres and Festivals,” Ross Stuart describes the summer theatre companies that emerged in the 1920s as “rustic and amateur”;247 then, in the 1930s, many of the professional stock theatre producers that were having little luck in Toronto found success in the summer theatre model. The 1930s saw an increase in semi-professional summer theatre companies, situated in small towns that boasted large summer populations. John Holden, one such producer, began producing in Muskoka during the summer of 1934 and continued to do so until 1939.248

Holden’s name would have lent the venture some legitimacy, and yet the productions resembled those of the Little Theatres; the first summer Holden spent producing in Muskoka he used the town hall as a makeshift theatre249 - a familiar practice for most amateur theatre groups. Other professional stock producers migrated to the summer theatre model, blurring the lines between amateurs and professionals in these small town theatrical landscapes. Cameron Matthews

247 Stuart 225. 248 “Unfinished Business III” 18. 249 Stuart 227. 151 produced at the Beaumaris Summer Theatre in 1935, and used many guests of the local hotel for cast members; The Globe referred to this successful cooperation between professional producer and “native talent” as “a further step toward the establishment of a National Canadian

Theatre.”250 This is a sentiment heard frequently from the media of the 1930s: the hope for a successful venture to turn into the “establishment of a National Canadian Theatre.” Even so, here it does speak to the perceived significance of these summer theatres. Actors were often paid, but no standard rates were established; they were also given room and board. These summer theatre companies offered theatre practitioners with other full-time jobs a temporary opportunity to pursue theatre full-time. This was especially handy for teachers; before Amelia Hall quit her teaching job to pursue a theatrical career, she was often able to work at these semi-professional small town theatres during her summer breaks.

These summer theatres would soon be interrupted by the onset of WWII and thus this model could not immediately develop past a few individual semi-professional ventures. Still, many of the strategies they employed would predict the circumstances and efforts that would allow several post-WWII Ontario companies to brand themselves as professional. Audiences of tourists and small-town residents met these companies in particular circumstances that allowed them to perceive the summer theatres differently than they perceived traditional professional theatre or the Little Theatres that operated year-round in the cities and larger towns. The summer theatres operated for short periods of time (eight to ten weeks a year, for most) in areas of temporarily concentrated population, where little other entertainment was available; there were guaranteed box office numbers and no opportunity for immediate comparison with professional touring productions. Their venues usually had no previous theatrical associations, amateur or professional, and they emphasized the professionalism signifiers available to them (the famous

250 “Summer Theatre Proves Popular” 10. 152 names of their producers) while still possessing many amateur signifiers. Audiences after WWII would be meeting with new Canadian professional companies in particular circumstances: after a six-year interruption in the status quo. Additionally, most of the post-WWII professional ventures would learn to make use of the few professionalism signifiers they could achieve to garner recognition with the media and local audiences.

Until WWII put the progress of the theatre on hold, the 1930s was a decade in which

Ontario theatre began to exhibit some common characteristics of a professional field of cultural production. These characteristics would set the foundation for professional companies to emerge post-war. As many theatre groups shifted away from ‘theatre as a social activity’ to ‘theatre as a profession’, ‘theatre as a high art form,’ and ‘theatre as a product for audiences,’ the Ontario theatre began to define itself and its boundaries. During this decade, before the onset of WWII, the Little Theatres were increasingly centred in the Ontario theatre landscape, distinguishing themselves in aesthetics and perceived competence from groups that were considered more amateur. A particular set of aesthetic standards was increasingly found throughout the provinces theatres, reinforced through the DDF’s dissemination of British standards for theatre skills and artistry. Many professionalization strategies that would prove effective post-WWII were first employed in the 1930s. There was the aspirational or ‘over-reporting’ strategy, used by Cecil-

Smith of the Workers’ Theatre, in which a group would purposefully exaggerate its own development and its professional signifiers. The 1930s saw efforts to tap into post-WWI patriotism and anti-commercial sentiment by encouraging Canadian playwrights. There were still strategic attempts to mimic older models, though these were less common in the 1930s after proving largely unsuccessful in the 1920s. Many producers of the older theatrical models, such as stock, moved away from pre-war models by becoming smaller summer theatre operations. In 153 the media of the 1930s, the rhetoric with which theatre companies were designated amateur or professional became increasingly difficult to navigate as many Little Theatres became proficient and prominent. After WWII, the role of media and publicity rhetoric in categorizing companies and achieving professionalism would become even more vital.

In the 1910s, WWI disrupted and diminished ‘the road’ and increased the desire for a national artistic character; WWII would also disrupt theatrical activity all across Canada and thus allow for another period of paradigmatic shift in the theatre. This would affect Ontario acutely, as it had particularly active amateur theatres and still saw touring productions prior to WWII.

During WWII, few had money to spare for amateur theatre productions; most young men were serving overseas (thus limiting which plays could be produced), and the Dominion Drama

Festival did not operate until the war was over. This pause in the usual theatrical activities would cause many practitioners to re-imagine their field and its main theatrical models; the pause would also allow critics and audiences to see post-WWII theatre companies and productions with relatively fresh eyes, allowing some companies to define themselves with more freedom from traditional professional-amateur categorization. The influence of traditional foreign models of professionalism would still remain after the war, but there would be less resistance to new models and thus more possibility for emerging companies to negotiate their way to recognized professional status. 154

Chapter 4: Negotiating Professional Status in Post-WWII Ontario Theatre

The Second World War proved a six-year pause in operations for the theatre in many nations; in Ontario the interwar theatrical models and professionalization discourse were not forgotten, but there were no significant developments of them in practice or writing during the war. From 1939-45 the DDF and many amateur companies in Ontario suspended activities and those that continued production saw many of their regular company members leave for army service. The touring of professional productions that had diminished during WWI was further reduced during WWII. Herman Voaden’s “The Theatre in Canada: A National Theatre,” originally published in the July 1946 issue of Theatre Arts, offers a concise summary of Ontario theatre during and immediately following the war. Voaden writes that although theatre in

Western Canada maintained growth during WWII, in Ontario and other eastern provinces “the story is different. Only one university, Queen’s at Kingston, maintained a summer school in drama during the war years. […] Hart House Theatre was closed for the duration.”251 There was some promising activity; Voaden describes how “[m]any established groups and new organizations did splendid work in entertaining the troops, some continued their program of productions for civilian audiences, a few carried on the vital task of sponsoring new Canadian plays and experimenting with non-commercial plays and techniques.” In this article, Voaden expresses hope that the post-war reinvigoration of the amateur theatre community and the re- launch of the Dominion Drama Festival would result in “a National Theatre Conference, and in time, perhaps, a National Theatre with regional theatres and professional repertory troupes.”252

Though the developments of post-WWII theatre would not manifest exactly as Voaden hoped, he

251 Voaden “The Theatre in Canada” 136. 252 Voaden “The Theatre in Canada” 136. 155 was broadly correct that this break from and re-launch of normal theatrical activity would allow practitioners to re-group with newly ambitious goals. The wartime period gave practitioners and audiences a critical distance from the usual theatre fare (both professional and amateur), which created an opportunity for established perceptions and traditions to be changed post-war. Many models and practices that had been slowly developing or remaining largely hypothetical during the 1930s, would culminate post-war in actual professional activity.

The Ontario Little Theatres that were so centred in the interwar period would not directly professionalize post-war, but the practitioners they had trained would find the easiest transition to professional theatre and radio; as well, companies that bore signature traits of the Little

Theatres would be the first in Ontario to be recognized as Canadian professional theatres. Indeed, many of these companies would present themselves as professional firsts on a national, rather than local, scale. The aesthetics and boundary-defining activities of the 1930s had had difficulty shaking the popular notion that professional theatre was all foreign theatre, but would prove foundational for the developments of post-WWII professional theatre. In the ten years after

WWII, audiences and critics were unusually open to paradigmatic shifts, and these shifts allowed small Ontario companies to move past the notion that Canadian theatre automatically meant amateur theatre.

The post-war decade of Ontario professional theatre has been recounted comprehensively in other sources, such as Scott’s “Professional Performers and Companies” from Later Stages,

McNicoll’s The Opening Act, and in Benson and Conolly’s English-Canadian Theatre. It has also been recounted through the lens of specific early professional companies, such as

Sperdakos’s Dora Mavor Moore biography, Amelia Hall’s Life Before Stratford memoir, and several books on the founding of the Stratford Festival. Most historical narratives of post-WWII 156

Canadian theatre list the first professional companies and discuss their contributions to Canadian theatre, but their professional status is usually presented as clear and obvious. One of the major contributions this study seeks to make is to establish that each of these ‘first’ companies achieved professionalism through their navigation of professional signifiers and of the professional-amateur spectrum, rather than an indisputable step upwards in an amateur- professional binary hierarchy. There is little discussion in Canadian theatre scholarship of what definition of “professional” these post-WWII companies and their contemporary media were using and how the ‘first’ professional companies met or expanded that definition. Filewod, in

Committing Theatre, states that for most scholars the post-WWII period represents a series of

“false starts” at establishing Canadian professional theatre. Indeed, disparate companies attempting professionalism in a trial-and-error fashion does defy easy summarization. These post-WWII professional companies did not all form themselves based on the same professional models or strategies; collectively, they represent a multitude of models and strategies from the inter-war professionalization discourse. Filewod continues on to state that Canadian theatre historiography “has tended to chart the historical progress of theatres as companies and structures rather than as practices”;253 it also largely has not charted evolving models and definitions on which these companies, structures, and practices are based. So while the history of the early professional companies has been recounted elsewhere, their statuses as professional and

Canadian have rarely been interrogated. This chapter will examine the source of professional and

Canadian identity for several of the first professional companies, with a specific focus on how they were aided by inter-war developments in Ontario theatre, what professional signifiers featured in their public rhetoric, and how the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism was expanded by their artistic and financial practices, mandates, and media reception.

253 Filewod 150. 157

The post-WWII decade was not merely a series of failed starts before a professional field finally began to form; it was a time for much needed building of the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism - a definition on which a field could thereafter be established. The post-WWII professional Ontario theatre companies had to negotiate traditional models of professional theatre as automatically foreign and Canadian theatre as automatically amateur.

Several companies would navigate these models by adopting traits from the Little Theatres, many of which had come to connote ‘Canadian’ during the 1930s. Companies that possessed

Little Theatre traits, such as the New Play Society and the Jupiter Theatre, would find artistic success and a strong sense of Canadian identity, but would encounter difficulty in establishing sustainable economic professionalism. Many of the popular pre-WWII theatrical models had never had to operate as businesses, and “even with stellar casts and critical acclaim, success was precarious and doubtful in those post-war years.”254 Other early professional companies would find some financial stability by imitating traditional professional models such as stock and repertory, but would still need to assert their Canadian identity through adoption of Little Theatre traits and use of rhetoric from other inter-war Canadian professional theatre models. These different types of post-war companies built a broad definition of Canadian professional theatre, encompassing elements of different nationalistic and economic professional models.

If presented as a history of theatre companies, a historical narrative of the activity between 1946 and 1955 might look like a period of largely failed attempts at professionalism – most of these post-WWII professional theatres did not last more than five seasons. As a history of foundational definitions and shifting public perceptions instead, the historical narrative of the post-WWII decade would illuminate the value of these years for the later formation of a

Canadian professional theatre field. Each of these post-war professional companies, even those

254 McNicoll 203. 158 that lasted only a few seasons, acted as a step towards broadening what a Canadian theatrical professional could be; they represent different models of theatrical professionalism, allowing audiences and the media to begin accepting that not only could Canadian theatre be professional

– Canadian professional theatre could exist in different forms as well.

The state of professional theatre in Ontario 1946-1955

Several of the first Ontario professional theatre companies came and went between 1946 and

1955, with only the Crest and the Stratford Festival still operational by the dawn of 1956. The province’s large population centres could not yet support more than one or two local professional theatre companies at a time; while foreign touring productions would still sell out in Toronto and

Ottawa, Canadian professional theatres competed with each other for audiences, artists, and resources. This decade saw a shift in audience perception, but there was not yet enough box office support for locally-created professional theatre to build and sustain an entire field in

Ontario; several critics and practitioners note during this post-WWII period that the early professional companies cannibalized each other. The opening of the Jupiter Theatre saw the New

Play Society lose sole access to their home venue, and the opening of Stratford Festival cost the

Canadian Repertory many of its key actors. Long-term the success of any one professional theatre helps others; each professional company essentially developed audiences, artists, and resources for companies to come. But, in the short-term, these first professional companies had limited audiences, venues, resources, and actors from which to draw.

Though it is tempting to refer to the Ontario professional theatres of this decade as a professional theatre field or community, it is more accurate to simply refer to them as the post-

WWII Ontario professional theatre companies. There are some later points in the early-to-mid 159

1950s when there were a number of concurrent professional companies; however, when referring to the post-WWII Ontario theatre landscape, it should be understood that at all points between

1946-1955 that landscape was comprised of large amounts of amateur activity and few professional companies.

According to the definition of a professional field established in Chapter One using concepts from Bourdieu, Goode, and Frame, a professional field is distinguished by the existence of a professional association, standardized remunerations, formal training facilities teaching specialized skills, and societal value placed on the profession and its specialized skills - all of which would create official and unofficial barriers to accessing the field for aspiring pre- professionals. In a professional field there are clear indicators of membership for those inducted, and some regularity of practice is expected from members. A professional field would also possess the characteristics of a community, such as a communal identity, means of inter- community communication, common jargon, and defined boundaries. In the case of a professional field of cultural production, appreciation for the specialized skills of professionals would be heavily influenced by a continuously evolving set of criteria for aesthetic distinction.

Clearly, the post-WWII professional theatres in Ontario were still far from constituting a professional field. There was no professional association and no standardization for training or rates of pay. While the companies began to communicate and cooperate with each other over the course of the decade, it was at most a small community with inconvenient distances between most of its members; there were few benefits to being close together, as early professional companies often provided more box office competition than support for each other. “Is the town ready to support the kind of activity every cultured person thinks it should have?” Whittaker asked as the opening of the Crest approached in 1954; “Will the people turn out for three groups, 160 or will the three be milking the same faithful congregation?”255 Even as each company benefitted from the expansion of the Canadian professional theatre image that previous companies had achieved, the opening of one professional theatre often predicted the closing of another.

Throughout the 1930s the amateur theatre in Ontario had begun to take on some characteristics of a field of cultural production; it defined its boundaries, formed barriers to access, and established aesthetic tastes. Many members of the early professional companies brought with them characteristics and aesthetics from the interwar amateur theatre community.

For audiences immediately post-war, however, the expected aesthetics and competence for professional theatre were still predominantly derived from foreign productions. So while there was some consensus of aesthetics among critics and practitioners of the early professional companies, it took longer for audiences to update their expectations and to patronize local professional theatre in large numbers. In short, conditions were right in the post-WWII decade for the creation of individual Ontario professional companies, but not for the development of a full professional field.

The definition of a profession can also be broken down to the list of professionalism signifiers outlined in Chapter One; in the absence of a fully formed professional field, a singular professional group or practitioner may claim their professionalism through signifiers. An individual may possess advanced training and demand consistent remunerations for their work, even without membership in a professional association; a company may possess economic signifiers of professionalism, such as paying their employees a living wage, while not yet acquiring artistic signifiers of professionalism, such as high-quality productions. The first professional companies in Ontario could not use many of the most common signifiers of professionalism to distinguish themselves from amateur theatre, as the means of gaining them

255 Whittaker “Three Professional Companies” 10. 161 were still non-existent in Canada. Local actors working at the Stratford Festival in 1953, for example, had no professional contracts to sign because there was no legal or union infrastructure; the only cast members to have contracts were those operating from foreign professional theatre fields, like Alec Guinness and Irene Worth. Early Ontario theatre professionals could not point to advanced degrees or standardized training in theatre as a sign of their professionalism. The New

Play Society formed its own school, but most classes were in television production and there was no certification received upon completion of a particular curriculum; the CBC radio had its own

“centre for training and developing young professionals”,256 and the only Universities that started to form Drama Departments at this time were outside the province, the first in Canada being the

University of Saskatchewan in 1945. Still, in post-WWII Ontario the majority of theatrical training was on-the-job for both professionals and amateurs. Professionals could not necessarily point to their wages to distinguish themselves from amateurs, as monetary remunerations had not yet been standardized and many professional companies paid only in inconsistent honoraria. In the absence of a professional field, there were few concrete and indisputable indicators to distinguish theatre professionals in Ontario from amateurs. Early professional companies had to emphasize the few achievable professionalism signifiers they possessed to the media, the public, and their company members.

Accounts from the post-WWII period and scholarly narratives differ on which Ontario companies are considered professional and noteworthy. Though there exist few detailed interrogations of their statuses as professional, certain companies are included in some accounts of post-WWII theatrical professionalism and absent from others. This is understandable; even established definitions of “professional” cannot solely be counted on to compile a complete list as most of the early companies that successfully claimed their professionalism would not meet

256 Scott 65. 162 those definitions. In my list of post-WWII professional theatrical ventures, I will be including companies based on self-definition, the possession of one or more professionalism signifiers, and their influence on and expansion of the definition of Canadian professional theatre. I will briefly outline here that list of companies, as well as their founding dates; most will receive further analysis later in this chapter.

Dora Mavor Moore and her son, Mavor Moore, founded the New Play Society (NPS) in

1946 in Toronto. Dora was known in Toronto theatre for her highly skilled amateur group, the

Village Players; she had received professional training at RADA in London early in her career and had taught acting and speech for many years prior to the Second World War. Though the idea for a professional company was Dora’s, Mavor Moore served as co-founder while also working as a producer for CBC Radio. The Canadian Repertory Theatre (CRT), founded in

1949, was the only professional Canadian company located in Ottawa until it closed in 1955.

Malcolm Morley, Reginald Malcolm, and Eric Workman created the CRT out of the remains of the Ottawa Stage Society (a short-lived attempt at a professional company), with patrons H.S.

Southam and Charles Southgate providing the funds. Actor and director Amelia Hall would be the company’s most influential manager during its operational years; the most complete account of the CRT can be found in Hall’s memoirs, published as Life Before Stratford in 1989. The

Straw Hat Players were a summer theatre company in Muskoka founded by the Davis brothers, their sister Barbara Chilcott, and Brian Doherty in 1948. The siblings had previously trained at

Hart House Theatre under Robert Gill. They would run the Straw Hat Players until 1955, though the company would last for many years after that under new management. The Jupiter Theatre was founded in Toronto in 1951 by a collective of well-known local actors and writers, including

John Drainie and Lorne Green; the company was characterized by its vocal commitment to 163 producing new Canadian plays. The Jupiter would last only three seasons, closing in 1954 due to financial troubles. The Stratford Festival was founded in Stratford in 1953 by Canadian journalist

Tom Patterson, with British director Tyrone Guthrie serving as the first Artistic Director. This venture would prove the largest and most prestigious of the post-war professional theatre ventures; it is also the only one of these companies that is still operating today. The Crest Theatre was founded in Toronto in 1954, another venture of the Davis siblings. The Crest would run until

1966 and its polished productions would set a new standard for professional theatre in Toronto.

Early noteworthy Canadian professional theatre can also be found in other provinces besides

Ontario: examples include Les Compagnons in Montreal and Everyman Theatre in Vancouver, founded in 1937 and 1946 respectively. These companies will not be receiving focus in this chapter, though it should be noted that many professional actors worked with companies from numerous provinces - Ontario and English-speaking Quebec companies shared a lot of performers. The existence of professional companies in other provinces allowed many actors to piece together full-time work if they were willing to travel.

As a result of the efforts of early professional companies, the job opportunities began to improve for actors and playwrights - but it was slow progress; “While our amateur movement is vigorous again, after difficult war years, those who want a career in the theatre can still find no professional companies in Canada to employ them at an appropriate salary,” wrote Vincent

Lovell in 1947.257 The New Play Society had been founded by 1947, but they were not enough to provide a “career in theatre” and NPS’s irregular payment of actors hardly counted as an

“appropriate salary.” Lovell continues: “It is not even possible to learn one’s job thoroughly here, for that can only be done with constant practice on the stage under experienced directors, and there are hardly any opportunities.” While they were too few and too new to constitute a

257 Lovell 64. 164 professional field, the first professional theatres of Ontario were immediately concerned with improving the economic reality and artistic opportunities for Ontario theatre artists, particularly actors. Common complaints about the state of the theatre from the media pre-WWII were the first to be addressed, including the lack of funding and support for local playwrights and the talent drain as a result of actors needing to move abroad to train and work. The NPS and the

Jupiter Theatre were frequently cited in Toronto newspapers as allowing Ontario actors to work at home rather than move the U.S. or Britain. By the end of 1949, actors could seek employment with the Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, the New Play Society in Toronto, or the Straw

Hat Players in Muskoka during the summer months. The CRT offered company members a living wage for ten months of the year, which could be supplemented with more sporadic paid work at other companies. Actors could also combine these theatre opportunities with better- paying jobs in radio and television, thus remaining in Canada full-time. It was not a vast number of actors that could be supported by this network of sporadic paid opportunities, but it was an improvement over previous conditions. For playwrights, there were still few chances for paid work in the theatre; however, post-WWII writers had more opportunities than ever to sell their scripts to radio and television. This allowed several Canadian writers to become well-known for their radio work in particular, which in turn opened doors for them in the theatre. Herbert

Whittaker even noted similarities to radio drama in Canadian plays of the 1940s and 50s:

“Because the radio is providing Canadian playwrights with their best commercial opportunities, its influence on the approach and form of our native drama is bound to be a most important factor.”258 Several companies like the NPS and Jupiter included the support of Canadian playwriting among their founding goals and were able to use the name-recognition of radio writers in their marketing and publicity. Though there were few professional companies in

258 “Show Business” 29. 165

Ontario, they were already starting to address the flaws in their occupation caused by the absence of a professional field.

An opportunity came in the middle of this post-WWII decade for the Canadian theatre to be assessed and to take stock of itself. The Royal Commission on National Development in the

Arts, Letters and Sciences, more commonly known as the Massey Commission, spent 1949-1951 gathering information around the country on a number of disciplines - including the theatre. The

Commission’s report, published in 1951, included recommendations that led to the forming of the Canada Council in 1957 - the beginning of regular government funding of the arts in Canada.

The report offers an initial summary of the place of theatre in Canada, in which it proclaims that the “great heritage” of drama

is largely unknown to the people of Canada, for whom the theatre, where it maintains a precarious existence, is restricted to sporadic visits in four or five cities by companies from beyond our borders, to the laudable but over-worked and ill-supported efforts of our few repertory theatres, and to the amateur companies which have done remarkable work against remarkable odds, largely for their own private pleasure.259

This summary emphasizes the perspective of the “people of Canada” for whom the “great heritage” of theatre receives minor representation and consideration. The Commission consulted many theatre practitioners and critics in its research, and was chaired by Vincent Massey who was heavily involved in the creation of Hart House Theatre and the DDF. The report admits there is an interest among Canadians for the professional companies visiting from abroad, who will be

“sold out weeks in advance” even if the company is of “no great distinction”; however, this interest did not yet extend to Canadian theatres. Theatrical skills possessed by Canadians were not yet valued enough in Canada for an entire professional field to exist, though similar skills were valued in foreign practitioners and in radio. The report then moves through a checklist of

259 The Massey Commission 174. 166 what would traditionally constitute a professional theatre field, noting Canada’s lack of facilities for “advanced training,” the absence of a National Theatre or any concrete plans for creating one, and the general shortage of an audience and sufficient outlet for “theatrical talent.”260 When the report states that “the theatre has now reached a critical point in its development in Canada,” it is referring to a list of amateur activity including the Dominion Drama Festival and “local drama clubs and societies,” as well as the talent revealing itself through radio and television. Despite the Commission’s research and insight into the theatre in Canada, in its report the work that had been done by the early professional companies was underemphasized. The Canadian Repertory

Theatre is the only company in Ontario the Commission names as professional. The Commission summarizes the general activity in the province as a few “professional or semi-professional companies, notably in Toronto, which appear from time to time, and there are, of course, hundreds of amateur groups,”261 which reinforces the precariousness of the professional status for these early professional companies. The picture of Ontario theatre painted by the report is of an active field of amateur theatre while the professional theatre is sparse, made up of brief and inconsistent bursts of activity; not an inaccurate assessment, and it does suggest that the professional status of these early companies was still not universally established.

In the decade prior to the Second World War, models of what a professional Canadian theatre might look like were proposed and strategies towards a professional theatre were debated in newspaper and magazine articles. In the decade post-war, many of these models and strategies were tested in practice. Few models or strategies could be attempted on a large scale, or on a lengthy timeline, due to the precarious finance and operational stability of most early professional companies. These companies did not overwhelmingly base themselves on the same

260 The Massey Commission 174. 261 The Massey Commission 175. 167 model; they represent several different visions of Canadian theatrical professionalism. Some

Ontario companies emulated traditional foreign models of professionalism, such as the stock and repertory models that were adapted by the CRT and the Crest. Meanwhile, the Little Theatre model was adjusted for professionalism by the NPS and the Jupiter Theatre, and the Stratford

Festival and the Straw Hat Players emerged as contrasting examples of professional summer theatres. No national dramatic style or National Theatre would emerge in the decade following

WWII, though there was still significant interest in the latter. There were organized discussions regarding a National Theatre in Toronto, summarized by Voaden in his Canadian Forum article

“Theatre Record 1945.”262 Voaden’s account of these discussions provides insight into how the goals and ambitions of ambitious amateur theatre groups had changed over the course of the war.

He writes that, while many “older dramatic groups” were actively invested in the idea of a

National Theatre, “the younger groups” were satisfied with the more immediately achievable

Civic Theatre Association, organized by Globe and Mail critic Roly Young. The Civic Theatre

Association was comprised of fourteen Toronto amateur theatre companies and was formed with goals of establishing a permanent venue, an audience, and a “professional calibre” company.263

The Association, according to Voaden, drew attention away from the National Theatre discussions; Young’s tastes for popular entertainment stood in opposition to the anti-commercial values of the Little Theatre movement from which those invested in the National Theatre concept had emerged. Voaden refers to this period as a “schism” between “many of the older dramatic groups, those that were interested in a National Theatre, and the younger groups that have rallied to Roly Young’s cry.”264 This schism between ambitions for a professional National Theatre and immediate feasibility - between the “art” theatres and the “popular entertainment” theatres of

262 Voaden “Theatre Record 1945” 186. 263 Voaden 186. 264 Voaden 186. 168

Toronto - epitomizes the need for a definitional expansion of Canadian theatre professionalism.

Contrasting models and organizations served as competition for each other, rather than broadening of a field. In order to cultivate a field of professional activity, the category of

“Canadian professional theatre” would need to encompass both the artistically ambitious and the feasible, business-savvy models. In the wake of the Civic Theatre Association, which ended in

1949 due to Young’s untimely death, the conversations surrounding a National Theatre did not resurface. Still, rhetoric common to the practical Civic Theatre Association and to the patriotic, artistic National Theatre idea would continue to play a part in the critical reception of the early professional companies.

The Little Theatre model, post-WWII

The Little Theatre model came to signify Canadian-created theatre prior to the Second World

War; the Little Theatres themselves formed the aesthetic and critical centre of Ontario theatre, with Hart House Theatre and the DDF (historically friendly to the Little Theatres) proving especially influential. In the post-WWII decade it became useful for early professional companies to adopt elements of the Little Theatre model to reinforce their Canadian identity.

This differentiated them from the professional touring productions of previous decades.

Theatrical professionalism had previously been solely the realm of foreign companies; the first

Ontario professional companies in the post-WWII decade had to reach for professionalism while retaining their Canadian identity, and traits of the Little Theatre model symbolized ‘Canadian.’

In this section, I will focus on two post-war professional companies in Toronto that resembled pre-WWII Little Theatres. The NPS and the Jupiter Theatre were founded in the same small venue several years apart and both featured values common to Little Theatres. Both companies 169 pursued, to varying degrees and with varying success, the development of Canadian playwrights; both valued artistic integrity over commercialism and thus struggled for financial stability. These two companies contained members with extensive pre-war Little Theatre experience, though neither the NPS nor the Jupiter came as a direct amateur-to-professional evolution of a pre-

WWII Little Theatre (the NPS did use many of the same actors from Dora Mavor Moore’s previous drama group, the amateur Village Players). These were newly formed companies intended to be professional that chose to operate in a very similar fashion to the Little Theatre model.

The Little Theatre was not specifically a professional model, though many of its characteristics and values were also not inherently amateur. The Little Theatre model encapsulates a wide scope of theatres, from small community amateur groups to larger, more ambitious ventures such as Hart House Theatre; however, the distinctive characteristics of the model are generally found in its ambitious examples. Pre-WWII, these were perceived in the media as the height of Ontario theatre and the best among them were the closest to a local professional theatre that the province had. However, many of their logistical traits were considered unprofessional by traditional standards. They occupied or rented small venues under

500 seats; these were often not purpose-built theatres - stages in school-houses were common - and were lacking in wing space, dressing rooms, and general repair. Hart House Theatre was a rare exception to this with its purpose-built venue funded by the Massey family, and it was considered one of the best-equipped Little Theatres in North America. The Little Theatres operated with small budgets and cheap ticket prices. Their company members were mostly educated, middle-class English-speakers with some income and time to spare; their sets and costumes were simple and, when possible, borrowed. As Voaden complained in his article “What 170 is Wrong With the Canadian Theatre?”, many Little Theatres ill-advisedly attempted realistic sets, though some took his recommendation and tried for more daring designs. Little Theatres had short production runs, ranging from a couple of performances to a few weeks. Their ideological values were anti-commercial - a reaction to the increased commercialism of

American theatre and the infringement of American culture on Canada. Little Theatres were frequently called “training grounds” in the media and their skilled company members were educated through hands-on means. Many Little Theatre groups supported Canadian playwrights, though this is one of the characteristics on which the less and more ambitious groups differed; the smaller, more casual Little Theatres generally chose British and American plays, and the more ambitious Little Theatres were likelier to produce Canadian plays or adventurous foreign plays and to experiment with new styles of production.

The New Play Society was the first post-WWII Ontario theatre company to be recognized as professional locally and in the media. Like the Little Theatres, the NPS was small in size and budget; its regular venue was the theatre at the Royal Ontario Museum, which seated 435, had an inconveniently small stage, no wing space, and no back-stage washroom. Most company members performed several jobs, and many were asked to learn to perform administrative tasks.

Dora Mavor Moore started the company in 1946 with her savings of $2,000, which was quickly spent on the first two productions. Actors were promised small fees for rehearsals and performances and, as Mavor Moore admitted, “[e]ven this pittance was often in arrears, and I became expert at writing abject apologies.”265 In Sperdakos’s Dora Mavor Moore: Pioneer of the Canadian Theatre, she emphasizes how the costumes and set are clearly low budget in black and white NPS production photographs. Of their production of The Playboy of the Western

World, Sperdakos writes, “One photograph […] shows a wrinkled floorcloth, inexpertly painted

265 Moore Reinventing Myself 138. 171 set pieces propped up against equally wrinkled curtains, and above all, a tiny stage area.”266 The set-makers were working with little money and were often inexperienced company members. In early statements from the company written by Mavor, the focus is on professionalism signifiers that were idealistic and artistic, rather than technical or financial. Their application form asking members to subscribe to the first season states that the NPS seeks “to promote interest in good drama and give young Canadians an opportunity to create a Living Theatre in Canada.”267

Knowing they did not have the money or the training to achieve professional-quality sets and costumes, the NPS emphasized their artistic, patriotic, non-commercial values.

The NPS’s major obstacle was its inability to achieve the financial stability that would have allowed it to consistently pay its actors and to continue producing full seasons of challenging, non-commercial works. The NPS produced shows for very short runs, usually 2-3 performances in its first season and expanding to a couple of weeks in later seasons. This was due to the company’s minuscule budget, which did not allow them to purchase play rights for long runs, and the busy lives of the company members, most of whom still had other day jobs.

Actors that worked with the NPS in its first seasons were not doing it for money but for loyalty to Dora Mavor Moore and/or due to the NPS’s “unique position in the Canadian theatre”268 as one of the few companies with professional goals. A 1949 “Homemaker” column in The Globe emphasizes that the NPS’s casts were performing with the company “for sheer love of Canada and their art,” 269 and that each of the Society’s actors “has been offered a great deal more, in some cases a spectacular sum, on the New York stage” but had turned it down. Its low budget may have made operations difficult for Dora and Mavor Moore, but this element of the NPS also

266 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 158. 267 Quoted in Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 154. 268 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 160. 269 Purser “Film Shows Rejoicing” 15. 172 allowed the company to seem intrinsically and fundamentally Canadian compared to the large, foreign touring productions.

NPS’s choice of plays indicated the company’s anti-commercial values and desire to engage with a variety of dramatic traditions: “It was Dora’s and Mavor’s hope that the repertoire of each season would involve a variety of plays,” writes Sperdakos; “one British, one American, one European, one classical revival, one foreign-language presentation, and one ‘free choice.’

From the beginning, it was hoped that the free-choice could often be a Canadian play.”270 This proposed season breakdown exhibits the common Little Theatre preference for British,

American, and classical standards, and occasional Canadian plays; the programming of a foreign-language presentation was, however, fairly new to Toronto. The first play produced was

Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, which resonated with Dora as a key work to come out of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The Abbey Theatre, as previously noted, was an inspiration to many Little Theatres and was seen as the epitome of non-commercial theatre that spoke to the national character of its homeland. The NPS hoped that, like the Abbey Theatre, it would eventually be able to produce and foster the work of local playwrights. The NPS’s first two seasons would also feature Strindberg’s The Father, Maugham’s The Circle, Bridie’s Mr. Bolfry, and the Chinese Players of Toronto. They would also produce repertory standards such as The

School for Scandal and The Tempest, as well as hits from Broadway and London like Joan of

Lorraine, a meta-theatrical historical drama by Maxwell Anderson, and Uncle Harry, a psychological thriller by Thomas Job. While many of their produced plays came from British or the U.S., they were also often newer works that had not yet been seen in Canada. Furthermore, the NPS produced several Canadian premieres, including one season featuring five new works in

270 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 154. 173

1949-50 which was called “its most ambitious season”271 in the press. This “ambitious season” featured Mavor Moore Who’s Who, Henry Boyle’s The Inheritance, alongside works by John

Coulter and Morley Callaghan. The company also created the yearly original revue Spring Thaw.

Including any Canadian work among its seasons is another element the NPS possesses in common with the ambitious pre-war Little Theatres, many of which premiered a few new

Canadian plays and otherwise attempted to program British or American plays of artistic integrity.

Outside of the traits the NPS could control, the company bore further similarity to the

Little Theatres in how it was discussed in the media. The rhetoric with which the pre-WWII

Little Theatres were reviewed can be broken down into positive and negative observations: some

Little Theatres were praised as art theatres, antidotes to American commercialism, potential models for a National Theatre; others were called self-indulgent, lacking in skills and training, and overly traditional in their choice of plays. They were never referred to as “professional” in the media; however, many of their more experienced artists were named professional, and their productions were sometimes called professional-quality. When considering the media’s reception of the NPS, it is important to note how common it was pre-WWII to apply the word

“professional” to a Little Theatre without actually referring to the company itself as professional.

Due to its resemblance to a Little Theatre, and with professional Canadian theatre still being a hypothetical concept in 1946, some of the NPS’s early critics identified the company as amateur.

B.K. Sandwell referred to the NPS as “one of the new type of Little Theatre organizations” who performed “with professional skill” but “in an amateur way.”272 In early mentions of the NPS in

271 Whittaker “Amusing Play” 4. 272 Sandwell from a March 1949 issue of Saturday Night, quoted in Moore Reinventing Myself 141. 174 the Globe and Mail, it is included once among other “Little Theatres”273 and another among a list of amateur “theatrical groups.”274 In his memoirs Mavor Moore writes of a review from Nathan

Cohen, then a new critic, in which Cohen calls the NPS amateur before eventually switching to referring to the company as professional four months later; “the public was reluctant to admit

Canadian theatre into the major league,”275 concludes Moore. What he characterizes as an intentional or conscious reluctance was likely a matter of mixed signifiers; so much of the NPS’s organization indicated ‘Little Theatre’ and relatively few of its traits in 1946 bore resemblance to the theatrical professionalism Canadians were used to. Professional theatre used to come from foreign countries and operate in 1000-plus seat venues, not from former amateur theatre artists in small, tucked-away venues. Dora Mavor Moore as a theatre artist was also a mix of signifiers.

Though her early training and career were professional, Moore’s previous work in the Ontario amateur theatre community, most notably her Village Players, and her continued directing jobs with amateur companies even after the NPS’s founding likely confused critics.

The NPS’s first opening night was covered in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, but it was not given the fanfare of a ‘professional first’ that the Stratford Festival and Crest Theatre later received. Neither review from the Globe or the Star mentions the word “professional” at all.276 The first instance of a Globe and Mail writer calling the NPS professional occurred a little after a month into the company’s existence; “friends of this enterprising professional theatre are looking forward to seeing its members”277 in O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness - the very same production Cohen would refer to as amateur. The Globe and Mail would also, in 1949,

273 “Little Theatres Hitting Stride” 1946. 274 Sabiston’s “Toronto to See Varied Classics From England”, which appeared in The Globe and Mail in Nov 1946. It should be noted that this article does not use the words “amateur” or “professional,” but the groups the NPS is listed among are all amateur. 275 Moore Reinventing Myself 141. 276 Sabiston “Group Proves Mettle” 21. 277 “Theatre News” 23 175 mistakenly state the company “started three years ago as an amateur group.”278 The Toronto Star featured a series of ads from the NPS in 1947 proclaiming its “professional cast,” a statement the

Star would use itself to describe the company.279 This particular rhetoric is reminiscent of the way a Little Theatre might have “professional” applied to it as an indicator of quality or of the skills of its company members, but not to its status as a company. Using this rhetoric to describe the NPS implies a hesitation to embrace it as professional or, as in the company’s own advertisements, a desire to emphasize its few professional elements and avoid its complicated non-professional traits. It is little wonder that the NPS’s status as a professional company was arrived at quietly and by degrees in the media; it did not proclaim itself loudly as professional with ostentatious professionalism signifiers, like production values or well-known actors as

Stratford or the Crest would, and it could not state that it paid its actors a living wage, as the

CRT often asserted. The NPS had to emphasize its few professional characteristics and then patiently allow the media time to notice.

It is impressive that the NPS was able to establish itself as a professional company while so closely resembling a Little Theatre and while lacking most visible professionalism signifiers.

The few ways in which NPS differed from the amateur Little Theatres helped to slowly confirm the company’s status as professional in the media, to its audiences, and in the theatre community.

First and most simple was the company’s quiet but firm insistence on its own professionalism.

To the rest of the Ontario theatre community, and especially to those who Dora recruited for her first season, the NPS was clear in its professional status and goals. In her messaging to company members, Dora re-defined professionalism as a work ethic rather than an economic status - “as a

278 “New Play Society Plans to Present Canadian Works” 5. 279 “Dora Mavor Moore is directing the professional cast.” (“Plays Leading Role” 22) 176 pledge, not a wage” in the words Mavor;280 this allowed her to maintain the NPS’s professionalism while lacking many other professional signifiers. Company members were given contracts for their first season with the company which was an “indication of the professional status Dora was seeking.”281 Most company members did not end up receiving the honoraria promised to them in their contracts; yet, they all seemed aware that this was a rare and valuable opportunity to do professional work in Canada. Second was NPS’s use of a regular venue that was free of any theatrical connotations, good or bad; though the ROM’s theatre was small,

Mavor writes that it was “the only mid-city venue neither stigmatized by an amateur past nor already unionized by professional stagehands.”282 For the theatre-going public, Dora was able to brand the Museum Theatre as the NPS’s space, though the ROM was notoriously resistant to this branding and did not allow the NPS to place a sign outside on performance nights. The NPS also occasionally moved its larger holiday productions into the Royal Alex, collaborating with other professional companies like the CRT and prestigious arts organizations like the Opera School of the Royal Conservatory of Music. These productions prove the company was able to take advantage of venues widely known as professional on occasion to raise their public profile. Third was the NPS’s marketing and ability to attract top acting talent.

Second, season newspaper advertisements place a clear emphasis on the professionalism of the cast, rather than the NPS itself being a professional company. This is indicative of the larger trend in rhetoric around theatrical professionalism during this period: often individuals could be referred to as professional more readily than companies could, and companies were often said to be made up of professionals rather than being a professional company. As previously noted, this rhetoric can imply a hesitation to label a company as professional;

280 Moore Reinventing Myself 140. 281 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore152. 282 Moore Reinventing Myself 137. 177 however, the emphasis on the cast also helped reinforce one of the NPS’s few professionalism signifiers. “The list of artists with the NPS over the years reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Canadian theatre and CBC radio and television drama”;283 its consistent recruitment of talented casts was one of its biggest accomplishments as an early professional company.

Finally, there was Dora and Mavor’s notoriety and influence; Dora’s long career in

Ontario amateur theatre had won her many fans and followers, and Mavor’s work with the CBC garnered respect. Between the two of them, a list of prestigious guests was secured to attend the

NPS’s opening night, including Premier of Ontario George A. Drew.284 This respect for the

Moores and for Dora’s mentorship of many young actors made the NPS a valuable workplace in the Ontario theatre landscape, even with its inconsistent payment of its company members.

In retrospect, it is striking that Ontario’s first post-WWII professional theatre achieved recognized professional status while possessing so few publicly evident professionalism signifiers. It produced quality work on a shoe-string budget, contracted talented actors for little- to-no wages, and chose artistically challenging plays when traditional models of theatrical professionalism suggested sticking solely to American and British hits. The NPS was in numerous other ways indistinguishable from a Little Theatre, and yet it maintained its professional status through clearly communicated self-definition to its audience, its critics, and to the rest of the theatre community. By managing this balancing act between Little Theatre and professional company, the NPS was established as the first model in Ontario for Canadian professional theatre.

The Jupiter Theatre was founded in Toronto in 1951 and closely followed the evolved

Little Theatre model established by the NPS while also furthering the model’s visible

283 Scott 66. 284 Sperdakos Dora Mavor Moore 156. 178 professionalism and Canadian identity. The Jupiter built on the NPS’s example by emphasizing its own well-known founders and its commitment to producing Canadian plays. The NPS slowed in its production of full plays by 1951 and the Jupiter Theatre - mistakenly thinking the NPS had closed permanently by some accounts - began using the Museum Theatre as its regular venue, quite literally following in the NPS’s footsteps and taking advantage of the venue having been established as professional. The Jupiter also began with initial funds of two thousand dollars, and their initial press releases express similar values to the programme statements of the NPS. The relationship and similarities between the NPS and the Jupiter is a clear example of how post-

WWII professional theatres built upon each other to expand the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism.

Much of the early press for the Jupiter Theatre focused on the company’s founders: well- known writers and actors, many of whom were connected with CBC radio drama. Variety magazine covered the company’s creation in October of 1951, referring to its founders and board as “Canada’s top radio producers, writers and actors.”285 Most articles about the company’s founding make sure to list the names of its members, which included actors John Drainie and

Lorne Greene, writers Len Peterson and George Robertson, and Edna Slatter and Glen

Frankfurter from entertainment business and advertising, respectively. The group members’ connections to radio were frequently noted, with Drainie referred to as a “radio star”286 and the company’s cast and crew having been “recruited mainly from the radio studios.”287 This focus on the group’s founders also came from the founders themselves. At an early press conference,

Drainie (acting as the group’s spokesperson) “told of the group’s beginnings in a meeting with

Joseph Schull at Len Peterson’s house” - dropping the name of Schull, a noted historical writer,

285 “Canadian Radioites” 60. 286 Whittaker “Show Business” Globe and Mail 1 Oct. 1951: 13. 287 Karr 13. 179 despite the fact that he was not officially a company member. It should also be noted that Globe and Mail critic Herbert Whittaker, who wrote or edited many early articles on the group, directed the Jupiter’s first production, Galileo. Thus, the focus on the company’s well-known founders in the Globe leading up to Galileo can be seen as coming both from the media and from within the group.

Upon its founding, there was less confusion in the media over the Jupiter Theatre’s professional status than there was for the NPS; by 1951, the foundation had already been laid in

Toronto for the media to recognize a small company as professional. While the Jupiter’s first advertisements did not emphasize professionalism,288 its first interviews with the press did. “Mr.

Drainie made it clear that this was to be a thoroughly professional group, run by salaried management and paying its actors and directors”,289 wrote Whittaker; from the first, the company was able to claim economic professionalism signifiers as paying its company. However, the

Jupiter’s professionalism was often discussed in the media using rhetoric similar to the discussion around the NPS, with focus placed on the professionalism of the cast rather than the company. One Globe and Mail review referred to the Jupiter Theatre as a “non-profit organization made up of professional actors, writers and businessmen”,290 and Nielsen of the

Star discussed their production of Socrates as “written, produced and acted by Canadian professionals”, crediting them with working towards the “development of a professional theatre” while not calling the Jupiter Theatre itself professional.291 The company’s professionalism was frequently referred to as a goal of the company rather than a fact; “the group is thoroughly

288 “Jupiter Theatre Premiere Season Advertisement” 16. 289 Whittaker “Show Business” Globe and Mail 1 Oct. 1951: 13 290 “Toward a Canadian Theatre” 8. 291 Nielsen “All-Canadian Theatre” 10. 180 professional in its aims,” states the Variety article about the group’s founding292, and even

Whittaker refers to its creation as “an attempt” at a Canadian professional theatre.293 Greene also uses aspirational language in describing the Jupiter, stating that “[t]his is the first serious attempt to form a professional theatre where Canadians can make a living at the craft”294 - a statement that can also be read as a slight against the NPS’s professionalism and/or its inconsistent payment of its actors.

The Jupiter’s media attention did occasionally focus on other professionalism signifiers, such as its production design. One Globe and Mail article prior to the company’s first opening night centres on the company’s costumes for Galileo. “Elizabeth Grey and Barbara MacNahb are two of the busiest girls in town this week - for between them they have to clothe the 40-odd characters of Galileo” writes Lotta Dempsey in her regular “Person to Person” column.295 She emphasizes that the play “calls for a rich and varied display of cardinals, noblemen, street- singers, court ladies, philosophers and even a pope,” preparing audiences for a spectacle of period costumes. However, the Jupiter still had difficulty impressing the public with its production elements. The Star’s critic noted that Galileo felt cramped on the Museum’s small stage and “fell short of the hoped-for mark”, though he does conclude the production “shows imagination, good taste and, most important, professionalism.”296 Like the NPS, the Jupiter would find the Museum Theatre’s stage a mix of positive and negative attributes; while it carried some of the good-will accrued by the NPS, its small size and lack of wing space was still far from what most audiences expected of a professional venue. To compensate for this, the Jupiter

292 “Canadian Radioites” 60 293 Whittaker “Show Business” Globe and Mail 27 Sept. 1951: 9. 294 Greene quoted by Nielsen “All-Canadian Theatre” 10. 295 Dempsey 11. 296 Karr 13. 181 adopted promotional tactics similar to the NPS’s, emphasizing its well-known founders, its ties to other professional fields like radio, and its professional-quality cast.

While the Jupiter did make the fostering of Canadian playwriting a large part of their mandate and publicity, the company did not produce exclusively Canadian plays; in practice, less than half of their productions were new Canadian works. This did not result in any negative publicity, however, and generally was still seen as a fulfillment of their mandate. Because of the precedent set by the Little Theatres and the NPS, to produce any Canadian plays was noteworthy and more than once a season was seen as a thoroughly ambitious undertaking. Almost immediately upon its founding, the Jupiter fell into the chicken-and-egg conundrum of Canadian playwriting that had plagued theatre groups and critics for over a decade previously: one cannot produce Canadian plays if so few are being written, and so few are being written because no companies are producing them. The Jupiter’s “first aim was to provide an outlet for Canadian plays, but it was found later that the Canadian plays available were below the standard Jupiter felt it was necessary to maintain”;297 the company’s first statements to the press presented the sentiment that they did not want to produce poor-quality plays simply because they were

Canadian, thus allowing them to program only one Canadian play into their first season while still benefitting from the patriotism of their mandate. The company’s other solution to the lack of

‘suitable’ Canadian plays was to choose innovative, non-commercial foreign works for the rest of their productions. Its first season included Galileo by Brecht (then a new playwright to

Canadian audiences), The Biggest Thief in Town by Dalton Trumbo, and Crime Passionnel by

Jean-Paul Sartre. In these adventurous programming choices, the Jupiter expanded upon the precedent set by ambitious pre-war Little Theatres and by Dora Mavor Moore’s choice of

297 Whittaker “Show Business” Globe and Mail 1 Oct. 1951: 13 182

Playboy for the NPS’s opening production: where Canadian plays were lacking, non- commercial works of artistic integrity could stand in.

The Jupiter had close ties with several critics, including Whittaker and Cohen (who wrote one play for the company), which helped its professional status be recognized in the media.

Incidentally, it was Cohen’s involvement with the company that gave it its biggest connection to the anti-commercial and anti-American values that were only implied in their press releases.

Partington, in his article “The Jupiter Theatre’s Canadian Content and the Critics,” quotes a rant from Cohen in 1951 on the radio in which he complains of Toronto theatre being “subjected to the commercial American inanities that infest the play catalogue.” Cohen suggests the development of Canadian playwrights as a possible antidote to this problem. As Partington points out, there is no evidence that the founders of the Jupiter based their mandate directly on

Cohen’s radio rant, but the sentiment of his statement clearly connects the support of Canadian plays to anti-commercial values. Between the anti-commercial connotations of Canadian playwriting and of the company’s other programming choices, the Jupiter was clearly associated to the tradition of anti-commercial values in Canadian theatre as previously established by the

Little Theatre movement and the NPS.

In 1954, the Jupiter would move a production to the Royal Alex Theatre in the hope of achieving a more visible level of professionalism. This same move was a success for the NPS years before, selling well, establishing the company’s tradition of large-venue Christmas family shows, and boosting their public profile. However, for the Jupiter this was a financial decision from which it was difficult to recover. The move to the Royal Alex coincided with the opening of the Crest Theatre elsewhere in the city, and - as many Toronto critics predicted - the city was not yet able to support that many professional theatre companies. Though the Jupiter was 183 effectively closed by the move that had worked well for the NPS, both companies ultimately found it difficult to achieve financial stability with the Little Theatre model. The ROM’s theatre, though a fortunate venue for many of the reasons discussed above, did not allow for large audiences or extended runs of popular productions. As well, producing Canadian plays and operating on anti-commercial values made it difficult for either company to turn to commercial models to fix their financial woes. The NPS’s successful use of the Royal Alex for several productions hints at a potential solution to this problem, combining the evolved Little Theatre model with occasional forays into more traditional professional theatre, but the Jupiter was not able successfully to emulate this practice.

Because the Little Theatre model was so prevalent in Ontario before the Second World

War, most post-war professional companies had to negotiate a middle ground between the anti- commercial values of the Little Theatres and the inherent commercialism of professional theatre.

The anti-commercialism of the Little Theatres was fundamental to the values of the pre-war

Ontario theatre community. Audiences were encouraged to support the Little Theatres for the good of the community and Canadian culture, rather than as a business investment; this carried over to the post-war professional companies, as many arts journalists berated audiences for not frequently attending their productions. The NPS and the Jupiter emphasized themselves as ventures of artistic integrity rather than as theatrical businesses, even when making bold financial moves like renting out the Royal Alex for larger productions. Though the Little Theatre movement would remain amateur, its characteristics would continue to denote “Canadian” as the professional theatre developed. The movement’s anti-commercial values would have remain part of the Ontario and Canadian theatre fabric, and would need to be negotiated by professional companies hoping to remain distinct from American theatre. The examples of the NPS and the 184

Jupiter illustrate how the post-war definition of theatrical professionalism began to develop based on familiar Canadian theatre models and traditional professionalism signifiers, and how the early professional companies built upon the work each had done previously to expand this definition and the public’s perception.

The new stock and repertory models

The most business-focused and financially stable of the post-WWII professional Ontario companies were those that emulated foreign professional models and infused them with

Canadian identity. This section will focus on the Canadian Repertory Theatre and the Crest as ventures that adopted foreign models of professionalism (stock and repertory theatre) and adapted those models sufficiently to be received as Canadian by the media and the public. In doing so, both companies further expanded the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism: the CRT represented a professional model that prioritized full-time production and a living wage for all company members, while the Crest prioritized high production values and meeting audience expectations. The new Canadian stock and repertory models use traditional professionalism signifiers and logistical frameworks, combined with distinctive characteristics of pre-WWII Canadian theatre. This combination created by companies such as the CRT and the

Crest resulted in acceptance by the media as both professional and Canadian; additionally, these companies were able to use traditional theatrical business models to achieve some operational and financial stability.

As discussed in Chapter Two, “stock” and “repertory” are often used as synonyms today but in the early- to mid-twentieth century there was a perceivable difference between them in terms of logistics and cultural capital. A stock company was generally a small- to medium-sized 185

American commercial theatre; by the post-WWII period they were seen as old-fashioned and derivative. They were businesses designed to appeal to local audiences with popular, well-proven plays; they were not intended to be producers of artistic excellence and innovation. Still, the stock company was considered professional and represented a theatrical model in which working actors could make a living wage and hone their skills. Meanwhile, repertory theatres were the traditional yet high-quality professional companies of the U.K.; these theatres produced works largely from the classical repertoire rather than recent popular successes and came with more cultural capital and artistic integrity than did stock companies. Both stock and repertory theatres had rigorous production schedules, produced well-known plays, and were common models for

British and American professional theatre.

Despite close resemblance to the American stock model, the CRT was received as a

Canadian professional company. It was the only professional theatre company in Ottawa, and thus was frequently praised by journalists for saving Canada from the embarrassment of lacking a professional theatre in its capital. The CRT also embodied characteristics and encouraged rhetoric from popular pre-war Canadian theatrical models, such as the Little Theatre and the

National Theatre. The CRT gained its Canadian identity not from its content, but from its location, its name, its Canadian company members, and a few other characteristics typical of pre-

WWII Canadian theatre; in its logistical organization, framework, and content, the CRT was a stock company. Emulating this traditional model of professional theatre proved a useful way for the CRT to mitigate risk. As Amelia Hall states in her memoirs about the company’s infamously safe choices of plays: “a burgeoning theatre cannot afford to offend its audience.”298 The company chose its plays almost entirely from the popular repertoire of American and British theatre; it could not afford to produce plays that might offend patrons or appeal to only a niche

298 Hall 141. 186 audience. The managers also had to take into account the production schedule - the CRT produced at a pace of one show per week, with performances taking place in the evenings and the company rehearsing for the next show during the day. “The vast number of plays this method requires,” wrote Whitehead of the Montreal Gazette, “makes it necessary that the directors rely mainly on light, easy-to-produce comedies.”299 Their pace was not the only reason ‘safe’ plays were the norm for the CRT; each play also had to be approved by the school in which the company’s venue was housed, as the LaSalle Academy was a religious educational institution.

This prevented risqué or controversial scripts from being produced, and the few instances of

‘vulgarity’ in the approved scripts were censored. Hall admits in her memoirs that little thought was given to each season’s theme. Plays were chosen for their production feasibility, likelihood to appeal to Ottawa audiences, roles for company members, artistic preferences of the company’s managers, and their likelihood to gain the censor’s approval. The CRT produced very few

Canadian plays; the company was open about the fact that fostering Canadian playwrights was not a priority during its first several seasons.300

The media’s reception of the CRT indicates that its resemblance to the American stock model did not go unnoticed but it was considered more important to champion the company’s work towards developing a Canadian professional theatre. The CRT was supported by Herbert

Whittaker in particular, though it also received notice from other Canadian arts journalists and even briefly in the Massey Commission’s report. Critics often praised the company’s professionalism, encouraged audiences to support it, and wrote hopefully of its journey to transcend the stock model. While Canadian theatre critics were aware of the CRT’s shortcomings, mostly they openly supported the company’s goals and spoke of it with more

299 Whitehead “Professional Group” 22. 300 “…our one aim at the time was not to develop Canadian playwrights, nor Canadian directors, but to get an audience to come to see plays presented by Canadian actors.” (Hall 144) 187 prestige than its productions perhaps warranted. By less positively biased media, such as Variety, the CRT was described exclusively as an “Ottawa stock troupe.”301 In general, the CRT’s name and its publication of its patriotic goals guided the Canadian arts media’s reception of the company, but its stock company framework was hard to ignore completely.

Some of the CRT’s stock-like characteristics were in keeping with its self-stated goals, while other aspects of the company were intended to resemble a high-quality repertory theatre.

The CRT management team put written statements summarizing their goals in production programmes. This was included in one or more programmes from the 1950-51 season:

Your Canadian Repertory Theatre is Ottawa’s ‘own’ professional repertory company, and one of the few all-professional theatre groups in Canada. Its weekly plays were designed to provide, at popular prices, legitimate stage entertainment of a high calibre to the theatre-going public of the nation’s capital.

However, important though the providing of entertainment may be, it is not the sole reason for ‘CRT’s’ existence. It has a dual function - the providing of stage entertainment and, more important still, the building of an audience that attends the playhouse through a love of theatre.

By creating in our city a consciousness of the value of drama in our cultural life, and by providing careers at home for at least a few of our country’s actors and actresses, the Canadian Repertory Theatre feels that it is contributing in no small way to the growth of the inevitable National theatre.302

The goals of the CRT included providing opportunities for Canadian actors, improving Canadian culture, and encouraging audiences to see and recognize the professionalism of Canadian casts.

Its goals did not include fostering Canadian playwrights and directors, though the company stated they would be open to evolving to develop playwrights in the future if financial stability was reached; a later programme stated that the company would hopefully “eventually be in a position to support and encourage Canadian playwrights, artists, directors, and theatre people

301 “Chatter: Ottawa” 62. 302 Quoted by Hall, 104. 188 generally, in continuing their chosen profession without asking for aid.”303 As the company would close in 1955 before this was achieved, the CRT concentrated on developing Canadian audiences and professional actors during its existence. These goals, focused on actors, entertainment, and adding to Canadian “cultural life,” place the CRT’s intent somewhere higher than simply being a stock company but still distinct from the Little Theatre model the NPS and

Jupiter resembled.

Of course, a company’s goals and what it actually achieves are often different. In reality, the CRT was a mixture of artistic achievements and obstructions, of nationalistic goals and commercial practices, and of amateur and professional signifiers. Descriptions from Hall and other company members portray talented company members with a professional attitude existing in a low budget, rushed environment where there were neither the resources nor the time to fully realize everyone’s talents or ambitions. It produced little Canadian content, but was staffed almost entirely by Canadians; the company’s major non-Canadian founder was British theatre director Malcolm Morley, but he was at least closely connected to the Canadian theatre due to his work as adjudicator in early years of the Dominion Drama Festival and subsequent directing ventures in Ontario and Quebec. Most significantly, the CRT represented a paying job for theatre practitioners; it was the first post-WWII professional theatre in Canada to regularly pay its company members a living wage. CRT managed to pay its company solely from box office revenues some seasons, though for others its funds had to be supplemented by its two patrons,

Southam and Southgate.

The CRT’s stated goal of financial stability was sporadically achieved throughout its years of operations. That the CRT was able to occasionally break even financially was largely due to its rigorous production schedule. Besides its breaks during the summer, there was rarely a

303 Bruce Raymond quoted by Hall, 104. Italics are Hall’s. 189 week during the year when the company did not have a production available for paying audiences. CRT management prided itself on the fact that the company was able to pay its company members, a fact it regularly mentioned to journalists: “What’s more, the management proudly informs us, it also pays the ushers,” wrote Whittaker in 1950.304 Its steady employment of company members was emphasized frequently in the media; however, the other financial troubles of the CRT also made regular appearances in Canadian papers and in Variety. As its stated goal of financial stability was so often publicized, a lot of the media discussion of the CRT was focused on its finances. Much of the CRT’s media coverage dealt with its money troubles, with articles appearing in the Globe and Mail, Variety,305 and the New York Times 306about the company’s difficulty breaking even. Despite the frequent coverage of its financial worries, the fact that much of its media discussion was focused on the economic side of professionalism reinforces the type of professional model upon which the CRT was based - a business model rather than an artistic one.

While the CRT’s rigorous production schedule did allow for the company to see box office revenue each week, it also made for hastily put-together productions: Hall describes many instances in which actors were still not off-book at the end of rehearsal week. When Hall went to

Tyrone Guthrie, her director in the first season of the Stratford Festival, for advice on the CRT’s development he immediately suggested a “two-week presentation of each play, rather than the former one-week run, to allow for longer rehearsal, and greater finish.”307 The CRT’s budgets were minuscule and production elements such as flats had to be used and repaired well past the

304 Whittaker “Ottawa Boasts” 10. 305 “Canadian Repertory Theatre, Ottawa stock troupe, shuttered for summer after nearly 250 performances in La Salle Academy theatre. Will reopen in fall only if local legit patrons promise solid support.” (“Chatter: Ottawa” 62.) 306 “The Canadian Repertory Theatre, the capital’s only professional theatre, will suspend productions next month because of a lack of funds.” (“Repertory Suspending” 41) 307 Dempsey 15. 190 point when a properly funded company would have discarded them. While Hall praises their set designers and crew, she admits her first impression of the company was poor. She wrote to her friend that she was “not enamoured of the CRT, that it was ‘tatty.’”308 The CRT’s productions were generally received by the media as good, occasionally great, but never particularly innovative. Even Whittaker, one of the company’s champions, frequently expresses hope that the

CRT will improve: “It has, in the past few years, shown that it can survive. But survival is not enough, it must reach higher.”309 The company’s main artistic goal was to showcase Canadian actors; the productions served that goal – and little else. Hall writes in her memoirs that “when you are doing play after play over a long season you cannot possibly take this kind of High Art approach,”310 referring to the impossibility of calling all actors to all rehearsals in order to foster

“the atmosphere of the whole production.” As Whittaker suggested, the rehearsal and production schedules were determined by survival, with little time to innovate, experiment, or “reach higher.”

The play choices being limited by censorship and box office appeal often led to repetitive programming; the CRT especially catered to the preferences of local organizations who would purchase what were called “Theatre Nights,” meaning the organization bought out tickets for the whole house (or a specific subsection, such as the balcony) and then distributed the tickets as they chose. Hall attributed the poor selection of plays in the 1952 season to the fact that their

“emphasis must have been [on] plays that were likely to attract theatre parties.”311 When enough of these nights were sold they were a financial boon to the CRT, as it meant huge sales with little effort and “[o]nce theatre parties had been sold, we would tell the public that such and such

308 Hall 99. 309 “Show Business” The Globe and Mail 27 Feb. 1952: 8. 310 Hall 152. 311 Hall 201. 191 nights were already sold out; this looked good.”312 However, in predicting what plays local organizations would favour for their theatre parties, the CRT often stuck closely to certain genres for long stretches of their season. A critic from the Ottawa Citizen complained of the 1952 season that “domestic comedy every Tuesday becomes a little monotonous”;313 in general, sales were poor for that season. The conservative, repetitive choice of plays contrasts the company’s goal of reaching beyond entertainment towards cultural enrichment, and recalls complaints made of American stock theatres and less ambitious Canadian Little Theatres.

While modelled after stock and repertory models, the CRT possessed sufficient traits from pre-WWII Canadian theatre and nationalistic signifiers to maintain its Canadian identity.

Like the NPS, the CRT too benefitted from the Little Theatre model’s Canadian connotations.

The CRT’s similarity in certain characteristics to the Little Theatres, particularly in its small, ill- equipped venue and its small budgets, prevented it from seeming too commercial despite its many commercial and conservative tendencies. Like many Little Theatres, the CRT rented a regular venue that was not purpose-built to house a theatre. Whittaker called the LaSalle

Academy theatre an inconvenient location, one that possessed a “lack of true theatrical atmosphere.”314 Hall also complained of the venue, writing that “it was necessary at LaSalle

Academy to have a theatre cat. When I arrived I was told horrendous tales of rats that were so bold that they appeared on the proscenium apron during performances.”315 It was frequently referred to as a less-than-ideal space and was not easily located by new patrons. Critics urged readers to make the effort to seek out the CRT, which helped solidify the company’s image in the media as an underdog theatrical venture rather than an American-style stock company.

312 Hall 151. 313 Weiselberger quoted in Hall 202. 314 “CRT Sparing Ottawa Obloquy” 8. 315 Hall 99. 192

Running through all of the CRT’s statements about itself was the intent to represent an image of Canadian theatrical professionalism - to be a national, rather than a local, theatrical achievement. It largely achieved this goal of being received as a company of national importance through three means: choice of name, use of National Theatre rhetoric, and repeated emphasis of the company’s singular status as the only professional company in the nation’s capital. The name

“Canadian Repertory Theatre” efficiently evokes many connotations that would benefit the image of the company in ways that would not have been achieved by its productions alone.

“Canadian” emphasizes the company as a national arts venture, rather than a foreign business model or local Ottawa community theatre - a signifier that emphasized patriotism and distanced the company from amateur theatres, which are inherently local. Naming the company

“Canadian” rather than “Ottawa” was also a way to make the CRT distinct from the amateur

Ottawa Little Theatre, despite the CRT using many actors from OTL’s roster. “Repertory” recalled the high-quality, classical repertory theatres of the U.K., connecting the CRT with that model rather than the commercial, conservative stock companies of the U.S that it otherwise resembled. The size, scope and productions of the CRT were that of a local stock company, but its name - and status as Ottawa’s only professional theatre - evoked national importance, prestige, and patriotism.

Both the media and members of the CRT invoked the National Theatre model to describe the company and its goals; Whittaker in particular was in the habit of doing this, both implicitly and explicitly. He frequently emphasized the success of the CRT as equally important “to

Canadian theatre in general” as it was to the company itself,316 and he would later express his beliefs that the company could become “worthy of the name of National Theatre”317 if it could

316 Whittaker “CRT, Sparing Ottawa Obloquy” 8. 317 Whittaker “Show Business” 17. 193 only receive adequate aid from audiences and/or the government. The company’s management never stated an intention to become the National Theatre of Canada, but they did make clear their desire to pave the way for such an institution. In their programme notes, they wrote: “the CRT hopes that it will encourage other cities to follow Ottawa’s example, until a National Theatre is truly and firmly Canada’s heritage.”318 Statements from the company and the media that did not explicitly invoke the National Theatre did so implicitly by emphasizing the importance of professional theatre in the nation’s capital. The CRT does so in their programme note quoted earlier, stating their goal to provide “legitimate stage entertainment of a high calibre to the theatre-going public of the nation’s capital.” The sentiment was also found in the Massey Report, which credits the CRT with “saving Ottawa from the dubious distinction of being the only important capital city without a theatre.”319 Similar phrasing was then repeated frequently by

Whittaker, other Canadian arts journalists, and even by Variety. Had another professional theatre company opened in Ottawa, the CRT would have lost one of its biggest claims to fame and the media would have lost one of its best reasons for encouraging audiences to support the company; likewise, to openly question the CRT’s status as either Canadian or professional at the time would have been to potentially deny Ottawa its only professional theatre.

In interrogating the CRT’s Canadian identity, it may seem sufficient to state the company was located in Ottawa, was made up of almost entirely of Canadians, and had “Canadian” in its name and goals. However, the CRT is not dissimilar to the professional theatres of the 1920s that were not considered Canadian and are not considered noteworthy in most histories of professional Canadian theatre. These 1920s business ventures were usually founded by Canadian and/or American businessmen; they performed works from the popular and/or classical

318 Bruce Raymond quoted in Hall 211-12. 319 The Massey Commission 175. 194 repertoire, or hits from Broadway and London’s West End; they cast foreign stars, but often employed local actors in smaller roles. The CRT began as a joint venture between Canadian businessmen and a British theatre director and chose plays largely from the popular foreign repertoire. Though it did employ almost entirely Canadians, its nationalistic position should not be taken for granted. The CRT owed its status as a Canadian company to several factors: its name, its location, its status as the only professional theatre in Ottawa, and its manifestation of select traits found commonly in pre-WWII Ontario theatres and theatrical discourse. It is especially the last factor that separates the CRT from the 1920s ventures and from the professionalism represented by the U.S., Britain. The CRT’s small and ill-suited venue may have made it seem “tatty” but it also made the company resemble the Canadian Little Theatres; it exhibited a connection to pre-war theatrical models and discourse. Though it may not have successfully embodied the repertory model suggested by its name, the CRT represented a new model of professional theatre that could make use of the American stock model while still being received as Canadian. It bridged a gap between old and new professional models, and contributed to the Canadian theatre professional culture by emphasizing the importance of paying company members, achieving financial stability, producing full-time, and building an audience.

The Crest Theatre in Toronto was founded in 1954, shortly before the Canadian

Repertory Theatre closed. The Crest would attempt (with more success) many of the goals with which the CRT struggled, such as emulating the repertory model and operating as a business.

The Crest achieved these goals for the majority of its thirteen seasons with the help of more financial resources than the CRT ever possessed, a less strenuous production schedule, and the name of its well-known acting family: the Davises. The Davis family was from Newmarket, 195

Ontario, and was one of its wealthiest families.320 Brothers Donald and Murray Davis had emerged from Hart House Theatre during one of its most productive periods, under the tutelage of Robert Gill; this period saw a number of talented actors trained at Hart House, including

Donald Sutherland, Kate Reid, and Don Harron (also a frequent cast member of the NPS).

Donald and Murray’s sister, Barbara Chilcott, trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and had worked as a professional actor for several years in Britain before returning to

Toronto in 1950. By the time they founded the Crest, Donald, Murray, and Barbara were all well-known in Ontario theatre. Due to their status and wealth, they were well aware of the expectations that upper-class theatregoers had for professional theatre, which would prove beneficial in their own theatrical ventures. Upon its founding, The Crest would meet with relative success in creating a repertory-style Canadian company; this success was helped by the founding of the Stratford Festival the previous year, in 1953. The Festival’s founding had expanded the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism to include more prestige and higher production values. The Davis brothers were vocal about their belief that theatre should be a business, not a charity. The company successfully operated with relatively large production budgets for several seasons before the Canada Council was established in 1957; by the time the company closed due to financial problems in 1966, it had become too reliant on the Council’s government grants. Still, in the post-war decade, the Crest was one of the few companies able to operate on more than a shoestring budget.

The small size and budget of the CRT helped it seem like a Canadian venture even while its choice of plays and logistical model were foreign. However, founded only five years later than the CRT, the Crest was able to use the familiar model of the repertory theatre and label it as

320 “The Davis family was one of Newmarket’s wealthiest during the first half of the twentieth century. Their [Donald, Murray, and Barbara’s] father, E.J. Davis, was one of the three brothers who owned and operated the Davis Leather Company.” (Carter 231). 196

Canadian while maintaining a well-equipped venue and high production budgets. The Crest could achieve this because of the precedent set by the Stratford Festival; in fact, the Crest benefited from all the professional theatres that had come before it. The definition of Canadian professional theatre had by this time expanded to include a wider spectrum of sizes, budgets, and mandates. Because of the CRT, NPS, and Stratford, the Crest was also able to pull from a pool of increasingly well-known and well-trained Canadian actors. The Crest set a standard for professional theatre ventures in Ontario, in production values, high quality of talent, and in size.

Its venue existed somewhere between the professional venues of the past and the recent, smaller

Canadian professional spaces; it was not as large as the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century venues, but at 833 seats it was bigger and better-renovated than the Little Theatre venues, CRT’s

LaSalle Academy, and the Museum Theatre.

In founding the Crest and preparing for its first season, the Davis siblings were acutely aware of the public’s expectations. They realized that certain production values would help audiences accept them not only as professional, but also as a first-class repertory theatre. Care was taken in producing their first show that the costumes be more than just passable. Illidge writes in his book on the Crest Theatre, The Glass Cage, that the Davises were concerned that

“well-heeled opening night audience[s] would expect the velvets, silks, furs and jewellery worn by the cast to be recognizably authentic”321 and thus a large budget was allocated to costumes.

Whittaker notes the Crest opened with “more behind them than had almost any other professional activity on the local books” resulting in a “high standard of production.”322 The

Crest quickly set expectations for its lavish sets among Toronto critics; Jack Karr of the Toronto

321 Illidge 32 322 Whittaker “The Crest’s First Season” 10. 197

Star admits, “it may not have been one of their showiest productions,”323 when one of their shows featured a minimalist set. The professionalism the Davises attempted to achieve with their first production was detail-oriented in a way that the CRT, as well as the NPS and the Jupiter, could not have afforded. All the early professional companies had to contend with audience expectations that had been set by large foreign touring productions, but the Crest was one of the few companies that could hope to cater to these expectations.

Illidge’s book at times inadvertently reads like a repudiation of the style of professionalism practiced by the CRT in favour of the Crest’s brand; while the CRT was clearly proud of fostering Canadian actors and creating paid opportunities for them, Illidge’s account of the Crest’s founding emphasizes the Davises’ respect for audience expectations. Media of the

1950s also noted care the Davises put into appearing professional, stating that the Crest “lived up to its claim of professionalism”324 and that its opening production was “a thoroughly professional job of work, with no apologies asked or given.”325 Illidge writes repeatedly that the Crest’s audiences “had a right to expect” high production values and a finished, sophisticated venue “in a playhouse billing itself as wholly professional”; the Davises’ expenditures on costumes and set are deemed appropriate rather than extravagant. Illidge also falsely refers to the Crest as

“Canada’s first permanent professional live theatre”.326 This is a plausible oversight, as many sources on Canadian professional theatre leave out one or more of the early professional companies. Still, it is clear from Illidge’s description of the Crest and the professional model it represented that the ‘tatty’ CRT was not sufficiently concerned with living up to audience expectations. The Crest was seen in the media as finally providing Toronto (and Ontario) with a

323 Karr 13. 324 Whittaker “Show Business” 7. 325 Karr 15. 326 Illidge 27. 198 first-class repertory theatre; implicitly, it was an evolution from the low-budget but spirited professionalism of companies like the New Play Society and Canadian Repertory Theatre.

The Canadian Repertory Theatre and the Crest Theatre both took inspiration from the repertory theatre model when developing a new Canadian theatrical professionalism. Both succeeded, to differing extents: while the CRT more closely resembled an American stock company than the “repertory” in its name would suggest, it was an important milestone in the development of Canadian theatre’s professional culture of remunerations and full-time production; the Crest was able to successfully adopt the positive connotations of the repertory model and distance Canadian theatrical professionalism from being limited by the pre-war Little

Theatres in size, scope, and budget. These companies both expanded the definition of Canadian professional theatre to include models that could be focused on finances and business, while still maintaining their Canadian identity.

The Biggest Summer Theatre

In examining the Stratford Festival within the context of pre- and post-war professional models, it is tempting to think of the Festival as the culmination of the pre-WWII semi-professional summer theatres. In reality there was little continuity between those pre-war summer endeavours and the Festival, except in the sense that the Festival benefited from the Ontario audiences primed to accept summer theatre as potentially both professional and Canadian. The impetus and early development of the Stratford Festival emerged from outside the Ontario theatre community, though founder Tom Patterson would connect with local theatre professionals during the planning stages of the Festival’s first season. In many ways the Stratford Festival resembles the professional theatres of the 1920s founded in Ontario by foreign and Canadian businessman; 199 though its impetus came from a Canadian, Stratford-born journalist Patterson, its artistic driving forces were Artistic Director Tyrone Guthrie and Designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, both British. As well, actors for a few key roles in the first season were brought in from outside Canada, most famously Alec Guinness. However, the Festival differs from this early twentieth-century professional model because it was perceived as Canadian by the press and public, and because it was designed to eventually be run entirely by Canadian artists. The Festival’s Canadian side came from its connection to and support from the city of Stratford, Patterson’s role as founder and first season’s General Manager, and the employment of Canadians in roles both on- and off- stage. In this way the Festival is an exception among the early professional companies examined in this chapter - its Canadian identity is not derived from its resemblance to pre-war theatrical models. Although the Stratford Festival was the most traditional (and the most foreign) of the post-WWII professional theatres, it also did the most to expand the definition of Canadian theatrical professionalism. After the Stratford Festival, Canadian professional theatre ventures could be large in scope and still be perceived as Canadian achievements. Because the impetus for the Festival and many of its creative decisions came from outside the Canadian theatre, the

Festival benefitted from previous professionalism discourse and practical attempts while also not being limited by their scope. The Festival focused on artistic autonomy, the needs of its immediate civic community, and the inclusion of non-theatre people in its staff, allowing for more effective audience development than any other company so far.

The original concept for the Stratford Festival came from Tom Patterson, who grew up in

Stratford. In First Stage: The Making of the Stratford Festival, Patterson is clear about his lack of any theatre knowledge and experience; “as a youth in Canada, I had never been to a live 200 professional performance,”327 and that had not changed by the time he began seriously pursuing the Festival idea. Patterson argues in his first-hand account that his lack of knowledge was not a detriment, and that it allowed him to focus on getting important figures on board with the festival concept. He discussed the idea for a Shakespearean festival in Stratford with Boyd Neel, an internationally known orchestra conductor who had recently accepted a position in Toronto, before he brought it to anyone in the Canadian theatre; Patterson hoped the approval of someone with such cultural capital would legitimize his idea. When he finally made contact with the

Ontario professional theatre sphere, it was through Mavor Moore and Dora Mavor Moore; it was

Dora who recommended Tyrone Guthrie to Patterson as the best Shakespearean director alive.

She and her New Play Society would offer invaluable help to Patterson leading up to the opening of the first season, which I will examine later in this section, but a connection with the Ontario theatre community and the recommendation of Guthrie were the most significant outcomes of their meeting.

In First Stage, Patterson quotes at length from his first letter to Guthrie, sent in 1952, in which he argues that the theatre in Canada is at a ripe stage for the type of development a large and prestigious festival could provide. Despite his arguments to Guthrie on behalf of the

Canadian theatre, Patterson admits to the reader the lack of Canadian theatre knowledge in his possession when he wrote the letter to Guthrie:

I was unaware of Les Compagnons in Quebec; I had never even seen a production by Dora Mavor Moore’s exciting company, the New Play Society, which had performed plays by Morley Callaghan, had created the long-lasting comedy revue Spring Thaw, and had done so much more. I had never even seen a Robert Gill production of Shakespeare (or anyone else, for that matter!) at the Hart House Theatre, in the University of Toronto. I had heard of Gelinas’s hit play, Tit-Coq, a Quebecois play which made it to Toronto and Broadway, because it had been widely publicized, but I had not even taken the trouble of seeing it in either language.

327 Patterson 29. 201

I knew of the Dominion Drama Festival and its annual adjudications, but only because the finals were occasionally held in nearby London, Ontario. And I knew of - but had never seen - the London Little Theatre.328

This summary is likely representative of the theatre awareness of the average Canadian at this time - Patterson was perhaps even more knowledgeable than the average citizen, as he worked in the media as a journalist and had, by this point in his life, lived in Toronto for several years.

Tyrone Guthrie, however, was not put off by Patterson’s lack of an extensive theatrical resume.

Guthrie would become the Festival’s first Artistic Director and was keen to produce Shakespeare in a locale that would have few theatrical traditions to overcome; upon becoming more familiar with Canadian theatre, he did begin to feel a sense of duty to help guide and foster the professional theatre. “[W]hat interests me about this,” Guthrie wrote in a letter to Alec Guinness,

“is that I’m convinced it’s the right moment. If Stratford doesn’t do it, some other Canadian community will. Canada’s bursting with money and, more important, Canada asks us (I mean

‘us’ as Europeans, and, more particularly, as denizens of the Old Country) to help.”329 Both

Patterson and Guthrie would learn much more about Canadian theatre over the course of the

Festival’s creation; Guthrie in particular would see many Ontario productions while casting for the Festival and reportedly had an excellent memory for performances and actors. The idea for the Stratford Festival’s infamous tent venue even came from a Toronto company, Melody Fair330

– a summer theatre similar to the 1920s professional model of foreign shows with foreign stars.

Patterson and Guthrie would, in their roles as spokesmen for the Festival, speak out in support of theatre professionalization in Canada; however, their initial planning and decision-making was largely based on Guthrie’s previous theatrical background and experience.

328 Patterson 61. 329 Guthrie quoted by Patterson, 94. 330 McNicoll 265. 202

The Stratford Festival Committee and other key organizational positions at the Festival were comprised mostly of city residents with influence, business experience and/or organizational sense; committee members had little theatrical knowledge. Guthrie, in his personal correspondence, cites this as a positive attribute of the Committee and Festival employees: these were people open to his expertise, with few theatre preconceptions of their own for him to overcome. Relying on Guthrie’s theatrical expertise seems to have been satisfactory to the Committee members, for the most part. Pettigrew and Portman, in Stratford: The First Thirty

Years, write of the one committee member, “who came from outside Stratford and whose limited experience in Little Theatre deluded him into believing he was an authority on the professional stage,”331 and thus annoyed the rest of the committee members with his know-it-all attitude regarding proper fees for actors. With the exception of the cast, prior theatre experience was seen as a detriment for the Canadians involved in the Festival’s first season. In First Stage, Patterson particularly praises those employees of the Festival who had no theatre background; “[t]hey were not starving performers, hoping that someone would discover them standing over the mimeograph machine; their job was to run the box office, and they wanted to make it run as efficiently as possible.”332 The sentiment from Patterson, Guthrie, and other accounts of the

Festival’s first seasons seems to have been that non-theatre people were more humble, more focused on the task at hand (no matter how unglamorous), and more devoted to the overall vision of their Artistic Director. Theatre practitioners from Britain, often Guthrie’s contacts, generally filled key roles in the Festival that required theatre experience, such as designer and production manager. The lead roles in King Lear and All’s Well That Ends Well were filled with British actors and the rest cast from a pool of Canadian actors - acting being the only prior theatre

331 Pettigrew and Portman 6. 332 Patterson 175. 203 experience that was seen as an asset to the Festival. The Festival’s production manager was Cecil

Clark, a former colleague of Guthrie’s from the Old Vic in London; he was hired because

Guthrie insisted “there hasn’t been enough theatre in Canada to produce the kind of person who knows how to pull all of this together.”333 The Festival was committed to training Canadians at all levels, but those with British theatre backgrounds were making the largest logistical and creative decisions. The theatrical innovations of Guthrie and Moiseiwitch were not purely British theatrical traditionalism, of course, but it is still important to note that almost all major creative choices in the Festival’s creation came from outside the Ontario theatre community.

As previously noted, the first contact Patterson made with members of the professional

Canadian theatre was with the Moore family; he met Mavor Moore through CBC Radio contacts, and Mavor suggested Patterson speak with his mother, Dora. It is indicative of the relationship between the Festival and the Ontario theatre community that, prior to Patterson’s first meetings with them, neither Dora nor Mavor had heard of the plans for the Festival. This seems especially odd considering Mavor worked for the CBC; one would imagine the news of a large, professional theatrical festival would have made its way to them quite early. However, at this point no one from the Ontario theatre would have had any personal involvement in the Festival.

Dora provided Patterson with advice and with the suggestion of Guthrie, and she herself was the intermediary necessary to get Patterson a phone call with the British director. In practical terms, this was the most fruitful connection Patterson had made thus far in pursuit of the Festival idea.

He had met with many people to discuss the Festival, including government officials, influential artists, and cultural figures; from them, he had received vague votes of confidence. Patterson’s pursuit of influential supporters delayed his meeting of anyone from the Canadian theatre; while these significant supporters were integral to the media’s support and coverage of the Festival, it

333 Patterson 97. 204 was also indicative of a particular frame of mind in which no one from the Canadian theatre would have registered as sufficiently important. While Dora did provide Patterson with the most practical help he had received so far, she would not become officially involved with the Festival that season; she would continue to offer advice, the use of the NPS space, and even her own home as a place for Guthrie to stay on his first visit to consult, but her involvement remained unofficial. Guthrie’s desire for artistic autonomy is a major reason why the Stratford Festival remained very much in his control that first season; his intent was for the Festival to help develop the Canadian professional theatre, but not be unduly influenced or pigeonholed by any pre-existing theatre community. While the Festival certainly made use of Canadian theatre practitioners in its first season, they were generally not put in positions of power where they might have the chance to disagree with Guthrie over large decisions.

Semi-professional summer theatres were prevalent in small Ontario towns prior to WWII, and this continued after the war. The summer theatre model of the pre- and post-WWII periods is of a theatre that operates only during the summer months in a small town or city and takes advantage of the temporarily inflated population of summer vacationers. This model of a summer theatre would usually become the only regular entertainment option available in the town or city, thus guaranteeing audience numbers would stay high. As noted in Chapter Three, these summer theatres often drew professional producers and talented actors from the cities. The mix of high- calibre performers and directors with small, rural venues primed audiences to expect that summer theatre could approach professionalism without a traditional professional venue. The

Stratford Festival was not a direct evolution of the Ontario summer theatre model. First,

Patterson’s self-stated ignorance of Canadian theatre would prevent his having been inspired by these other summer theatres in his conception of the Stratford Festival. Summer theatres exist all 205 over the world, so Patterson’s idea was more likely influenced by a general knowledge of the concept. Second, none of the major decision-makers in the Festival’s first season came from the

Canadian theatre field or had significant knowledge of it, further preventing the summer theatre model from influencing the early development of the Festival. While Guthrie visited Ontario theatres, some of them summer companies, this was more to scout talent than to gain inspiration for the artistic direction of the Festival. Third, in several fundamental ways the concept of the

Stratford Festival differs from the Canadian summer theatre model, most significantly in its mode of audience development. While the previous summer theatres utilized a pre-existent concentrated summer population centre, Patterson sought to use the Festival to attract audiences to the city to remedy the low levels of activity and commerce in Stratford summers. “It will completely reverse the usual trend in Stratford’s summer. Instead of everybody leaving the city, everybody will be coming in,” stated one fundraising campaign notice.334 The model of professional and semi-professional summer theatres was instead continued post-war from within the Ontario theatre community by several new companies, the most noteworthy being the professional Straw Hat Players founded by the Davis siblings and producer Brian Doherty.

Though the Players were producing on a small budget, they were also widely accepted as professional by critics. Clearly, this model of the Canadian summer theatres was alive and practiced while the Stratford Festival was being developed in the early 1950s. While the Festival did not emerge from the summer theatre model, it did benefit from it – both as a source of actors and in the model’s priming of audiences to accept summer theatre in a town or small city, in a tent or imperfect venue, as both Canadian and partially or fully professional.

The Festival also benefitted from the professional theatre that had already been created post-war in Ontario. By 1953, professional Canadian theatre companies were still rare but their

334 Quoted in Patterson 112. 206 existence was known to the media and to their local audiences. While Patterson was not personally familiar with many of these early professional companies, for regular theatre-going audiences the idea of Canadian theatrical professionalism was beginning to be recognized and early companies had already done work in increasing those audiences’ numbers. The Festival additionally profited from the training Canadian actors had received from companies like the

CRT and NPS, as well as from the CBC radio drama department and pre-WWII Little Theatres.

Guthrie was able to fill all but four roles in Richard III with Canadian actors. Finally, the

Festival benefitted from the expertise of one of the burgeoning professional Canadian theatre field’s members, Dora Mavor Moore. It was Moore who connected Patterson with Guthrie, and many of the NPS’s resources were lent to the Festival. Moore’s involvement in the Festival remained limited, it seems, at the desire of Patterson and Guthrie; in Sperdakos’s biography of

Moore, she states that Dora was determined to be involved in what she correctly predicted would be a landmark company in the history of Canadian professional theatre, but apparently others saw her enthusiasm as ‘pushy.’ Patterson writes that Guthrie was determined to retain a certain amount of autonomy over his artistic decision, and thus resisted Moore’s involvement. Guthrie stated many times in his correspondence to Patterson that he valued the opportunity to produce

Shakespeare in Stratford because there were no theatrical traditions to overcome and no local theatre experts to fight with over artistic decisions; Moore as a theatre artist would have symbolized the only theatre traditions that existed in Ontario at this point. There was also some worry among Stratford residents that too much use of the NPS’s Toronto offices was a sign that the Festival was considering moving to Toronto, which most cultural enterprises would have done. Wrote Patterson, “There would be great fears, throughout 1952 and beyond, that Toronto would use the Festival for its own, nefarious reasons - a feeling that ‘Toronto would try to take 207 control of everything.’”;335 this sentiment led to both Guthrie and Patterson limiting the amount of work on the Festival they conducted in Toronto. Thus, Moore’s involvement was kept unofficial and was diminished as the first season’s opening approached.

Unlike all the professional theatre companies that had come before it in Ontario, the

Stratford Festival did not gain its Canadian identity from characteristics or rhetoric reminiscent of pre-war Canadian theatre models or traditions. The Festival in its first season resembled professional theatres of the 1920s Toronto, and these were not considered “Canadian theatre” due to their foreign stars, productions of plays by foreign playwrights, and often ownership by foreign businessmen; even for the few early twentieth-century theatres that were founded by

Canadian businessmen, the model was still recognizably foreign. The Festival was able to maintain a Canadian identity, despite its foreign stars and British playwright, largely because it was promoted in the media as a community affair for and from the city of Stratford. While the city had initially been sceptical of the Festival idea, by the time the first season was in development Stratford residents were donating in large numbers to the fundraising campaign. By the end of the first season, “initial suspicious had given way to affection, and there was in the community a very real sense of pride in what had been accomplished.”336 A common sentiment about the community response to the Festival is summed up in the Globe and Mail headline:

“‘Little People’ Backbone of Stratford’s Festival.”337 No early 1920s Toronto theatres founded by businessmen managed to inspire the kind of community participation on which the Stratford

Festival thrived. Most of the other early professional theatres in Ontario arose from a need in the community: a need for employment; a need to communicate an artistic message; a need to expand the definition of professional theatre to include Canadian theatre. The idea for the

335 Patterson 62. 336 Pettigrew and Portman 5-6. 337 Purser 19. 208

Stratford Festival arose from a need Patterson recognized in the city of Stratford, which - while he was growing up - was losing its main industry. He writes in First Stage that as youths in

Stratford, he and his friends “understood it would simply be a matter of time until the giant steam-engine repair shops, which my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather once worked in, and on which the town depended, would be put to rest.”338 His festival idea came from a need to reinvigorate the city; he thought of theatre festival because of the town’s name, rather than an interest in theatre or the needs of the theatre community. Because Patterson was not a theatre practitioner or enthusiast, his Festival concept was designed to appeal to non-theatre goers and was not limited by knowledge of the decades of difficulty in developing a professional Canadian theatre.

Though the Stratford Festival is a landmark moment in the development of Canadian professional theatre, it did not emerge from the theatre community. It was not an evolution the pre-WWII summer theatres found in rural Ontario, and its conception and initial planning stages took place outside the local theatre community; even when the Festival did make initial connections with figures from the professional theatre, it kept those connections at arm’s length in order to retain artistic autonomy. All the major creative decision-making roles in the Festival’s first season were either filled by British theatre practitioners, or were filled by Canadians chosen and strongly guided by Guthrie. The Festival gained its identity as a Canadian affair through its immense support from the city of Stratford, minor support from the Ontario government,339 and from its casting of many Canadian actors; it was the first Canadian professional theatre to arise from a need in a city’s culture and industry, rather than to emerge from theatre community.

338 Patterson 26. 339 More support was given by Stratford than by the provincial or federal government; Patterson writes “The government grants we received for our inaugural season totalled a whopping $5,500. Five thousand dollars came from the City of Stratford” (Patterson 104). Support did come from some government officials, who donated personally and/or attended the opening performance. 209

Guthrie’s and the Festival’s need to escape theatre traditions to achieve artistic fulfillment can be seen as a microcosm for the development of professional theatre in Canada; both needed to escape certain expectations and preconceived notions of what professional theatre should look like in order to succeed.

For the professional theatre in Ontario, the decade from 1946-1955 was a time of trial and error; the professionalization strategies and models of the pre-WWII discourses were manifested, tested, and adapted. The early professional companies had to negotiate the middle ground between models that were recognizably Canadian and models that were recognizably professional, and these models previously did not overlap. In the absence of a full professional field, many of these companies manipulated professionalism signifiers and rhetoric in order to be accepted by the media and public as professional. The first few professional theatres, such as the

NPS and the CRT, were more modest in size and relied heavily on pre-war Canadian models, while later the Stratford Festival and the Crest were able to mount larger, more polished productions while maintaining their Canadian identity. The use of mostly rhetoric-based professionalism signifiers among the first few professional companies would give way to the use of material signifiers over the course of the decade; the anti-commercial, anti-American sentiments of the pre-WWI Little Theatres would remain prevalent post-war, but gradually companies like the CRT and the Crest would be able to mix art and business-savvy in their public presentation without being dismissed as too commercial.

The professional theatre companies that emerged in Ontario between 1946 and 1955 were too few and too far apart to be considered a professional field. However, as each new professional venture that was founded benefitted from the post-war professional companies that 210 had come before, each one stretching and expanding the still-developing definition for a professional Canadian theatre. Each company, some slowly and some quickly, built up an audience and increased the public awareness that a theatre company could be both Canadian and professional. 211

Conclusion

In historical narratives of Canadian theatre, the label of professional is frequently applied to companies and individuals with little attention paid to the long, complex road it may have taken to reach that designation and with little said about what that label implies about the mandate or practices of the company or individual. A key objective of this study has been to explore the means by which post-WWII theatre companies were able to achieve public recognition as professional and through what theatrical paradigms (models) the public assessed professionalism during the interwar and post-WWII periods. The unexamined application of the term

“professional” in a field without clear definitions feeds into the common narrative that professionalization is an inevitable process that occurs once a field advances sufficiently. It has been necessary in this study to reconsider the delineation of professional and amateur for the theatre and to contemplate non-binary definitions. These non-binary definitions needed to be functionally applicable to theatre and, more specifically, to Canadian theatre of the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Professionalization often is not something that happens inevitably to an individual, a company, or a field; instead, it is a purposeful process undertaken by those who seek the benefits of professionalism. This is especially true of theatre in Ontario, where, after years of the professionalization discourse not centering on any particular model or strategy, early companies such as the New Play Society and the Canadian Repertory Theatre had to forge painstakingly their own professional identities in the absence of any professional Canadian theatre infrastructure, support, or audience. The founders of these companies decided to pursue professionalism in a community where they could easily not have and where there was no clear 212 process by which to do so, in order to make their own occupation a legitimate profession and reap the benefits thereof.

This deliberate process of establishing professional theatres in Ontario was not mutually beneficial to the entire community, as is the case when most occupations begin to professionalize. Professionalization is accompanied by deliberate exclusion in order to make the occupation more exclusive and prestigious. In the case of theatre, the shift from “theatre as a social good” to “theatre as a cultural product” benefits those who want to make a living but negatively impacts the “social good” theatre groups. The Ontario theatre community’s journey towards professionalism saw the centring of certain aesthetics and ideologies, exemplified by the

Little Theatre Movement and the Dominion Drama Festival, while amateur theatre that did not fit this mold or was not suitably ambitious was excluded. As Hutchison put it, “professionalism is not only a description of the inherent nature of a particular occupation, but also the means of controlling entry to an occupation”;340 the process of achieving professionalism is driven by specific goals and tastes, rather than by an unprompted evolution of the occupation. The interwar professionalization discourse in Ontario, and in Canada at large, was shaped by the goals of its contributors and communities. The desires of critics to see a national dramatic style, the desire of practitioners not to have to go abroad to work professionally, the desires of both to gain legitimacy for the Canadian theatre through a National Theatre or similar institution: these goals and needs - combined with popular images of professional theatre from Broadway, London’s

West End, the Abbey Theatre, and foreign touring productions - were what characterized the discourse and the eventual manifestation of professional companies. Any companies or theatre artists existing outside these goals and needs, be it artistically, politically, culturally, or

340 Hutchison 55. 213 financially, found themselves left out of the professionalization discourse and unrepresented among the early professional companies.

As professionalization is a purposeful process, an important objective of this study has been to reconceptualize signifiers of professionalism as active tools to be used in that process.

This is especially true in the theatre world where, even in an established professional field, the qualifications one needs to achieve professionalism on an individual or company level are less clearly defined than in a traditional profession such as medicine. The examples of the post-WWII professional companies, particularly the earliest ones, demonstrate the way professional signifiers could be used in practice and in public statements to achieve a reputation of professionalism, as with the NPS and their public emphasis on the contracts for their company members, in addition to the professional attitude and talent of their casts. Signifiers and characteristics of professionalism are not only symptoms of professionalism achieved; they can also be reconsidered as a strategy by which one may achieve professionalism.

When a professional field is established, the influential members of that profession have control over membership and thus over what defines this profession. In the absence of a professional field and thus clearly defined professional infrastructure, common models of practice – often from parallel and/or foreign professions - determine how the public and the media differentiate between professional and amateur. As we have seen in this study, common images of professionalism may be derived from aesthetic standards or from outward characteristics of professional companies, such as country of origin, venue, and production budget. The example of the Crest Theatre’s opening and the Davis family’s desire to meet the expectations their audiences had for a professional repertory theatre demonstrates the power of public perceptions of professionalism. Common definitions are often reached by personal 214 experiences – by example; by establishing new examples, common definitions are most effectively changed. The professional companies of Ontario between 1945-1954 did more to prepare audiences for professional Canadian theatre than did the interwar professionalization discourse, simply by providing audiences with practical examples. As we saw in the theatrical landscape post-WWI and WWII, widespread interruptions of theatre practice allow for faster development of new or changed models; the public and community have fewer recent examples of professional and amateur theatre to define their paradigm of each. Even after the six-year pause in theatrical operations, the professional companies that emerged after WWII used the models of professional theatre and Canadian theatre that had been previously established for the public and for the media in order to achieve recognition of their desired professional Canadian status.

The first professional Ontario companies may seem like leaps of progress and departures from pre-WWII theatrical practices; however, this study has offered a re-examination of the practices and mandates of these companies and the professional rhetoric applied to them. Most of the first post-WWII professional companies in Ontario were new combinations of old, proven models created at an opportune time in history. The New Play Society and Jupiter Theatre combined the Canadian Little Theatre model with a public emphasis on their professional quality and commitment; the CRT and Crest Theatre combined the recognizably traditional models of repertory and stock theatres with the smaller size of the Little Theatres; even the Stratford

Festival, which was not intentionally based on any models from the Canadian professionalization discourse, benefitted from the precedent set by the semi-professional summer theatres of years previous. The distance between amateur and professional may seem like a wide gap to bridge, but the practical differences between pre-WWII amateur theatres and companies like the NPS are 215 actually quite small. Each subsequent professional theatre built on the foundation of the ones before, gathering new professionalism signifiers with each new iteration, and on the foundation of the interwar amateur theatres and pre-WWI professional traditions.

A major pursuit of this study has been to re-frame the discussion of professional

Canadian theatre through a re-examination of this early period in the professionalization process.

Scholars have often interpreted this process as Canadian theatre gradually becoming professional: the country’s theatre was characterized by amateur theatre, until professional companies started appearing, and then from those a professional field was eventually created.

When thinking in terms of theatrical models, however, it is just as accurate to describe the process as professional models gaining Canadian character, and Canadian models gaining professional status. In this re-framing of the Canadian theatre professionalization process, the

Little Theatre model becomes just as important as the professional models like repertory and stock, a National Theatre, and playwright-centric examples. Most early professional companies in Ontario used the example set by the Little Theatres, both for its low-budget feasibility and in order to characterize themselves as Canadian.

Looking Forward

As Filewod observed in Committing Theatre, historiography of Canadian theatre “has tended to chart the historical progress of theatres as companies and structures rather than as practices.”341

Throughout this study, I have sought to examine the historical progress of Canadian theatre through the lens of theatrical models in conjunction with theatrical practices and media rhetoric and discourse. Further historical research using a combination of theatrical models and practical examples would allow for histories that are more detached from aesthetic standards (in other

341 Filewod 150. 216 words, studies of notable artistic successes) and that may be more attached to economic, professional, and/or rhetorical analysis of Canadian theatre histories.

Due to the broad scope of this study it is necessary to choose a focus more narrow than

Canada as a whole. The tendency of national magazines to over-represent Ontario in their arts & culture sections, of American syndicates to focus their tours on Ontario cities, and the relatively large number of urban centres in Ontario (as compared to other provinces) are all factors that made it a natural starting point for this sort of study. However, the logical next phase of this topic would be to research similar processes in the rest of Canada’s regions. As is evident in this project, many of the writings of the professionalization discourse included examples from numerous Canadian cities and spoke to cross-country trends; actors and other theatre artists often worked in both Ontario and Quebec. Can Canadian theatre be said to have one professionalization process, or several such processes occurring separately in different communities across the country? It would be fruitful to find out how the early years of professional theatre in Ontario (and the lead up to them) compares to that of provinces the farther away from formerly vibrant pre-WWI touring system.

At the time of this writing, Canadian theatre history is full of singular sources: sources on a particular company, individual, event, or work that remains the only (or one of few) scholarly writings on that subject. Some modern figures receive more detailed and varied attention, but most post-1960 subjects remain at a shallow level of research coverage. While this makes a certain logical sense for an under-researched field, it also means that designations and narratives are set and then not questioned; figures and subjects are uncovered by historians but then, once in the light, not further examined. As Robin Whittaker concludes in his dissertation on 217 nonprofessionalized theatre, “what has been ignored can be ignored again.”342 One scholar can give a topic a brief reprieve from being forgotten, but that topic must be then re-examined and questioned from different perspectives.

The intention of this study was not to create a complete history of Canadian theatre’s professionalization; I have stopped short of even the creation of a fully realized professional theatre field. Nor was the purpose of this project to uncover previously forgotten theatre companies or figures, though many of the quoted contemporary articles had not been, I believe, reprinted since their original publication or referenced in any recent scholarship. This study ended at the very start of the professionalization process in Ontario theatre; this process continues today and the division between amateur and professional remains complicated. In

1986, more than 30 years after the period of this study, Mavor Moore penned an opinion piece on the amateur/professional divide in Canadian theatre. He wrote, “I know of no issue in the arts that so divides the general public – especially in Canada, where a long and vigorous amateur tradition has been matched only in the last 35 years by an equally dynamic professionalism.”343

He then defines each category, based largely on his own anecdotal experience; most significant, however, is his conclusion that the two groups need each other despite the antagonism between them. The distinction – and thus the tension - between amateur and professional is not simply a matter of identity for artists; it also affects their ability to receive federal funding. Clearly, the artistic changes in the decade after WWII still affected the mentality of those who created theatre during that period throughout the rest of their careers. It is a worthwhile endeavour to continue examining our current state of that unclear division and how we have arrived here through the full professionalization process Canadian theatre has undertaken.

342 Whittaker, Robin “Un/Disciplined Performance” 239. 343 Moore “Amateurism vs. professionalism: a divisive issue” D3. 218

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---. “Three Professional Companies Promise Healthy Competition.” The Globe and Mail, Sept 5, 1953, pp. 10, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail, http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/1287215057?accountid=14771.

Whittaker, Robin. “Un/Disciplined Performance: Nonprofessionalized Theatre in Canada’s Professional Era.” 2010, University of Toronto, PhD Dissertation.

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Young, Roly. “Rambling With Roly.” The Globe, Apr 29, 1937, pp. 8, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail, http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/1353685823?accountid=14771.